Recently, the Premier of Ontario announced that the Ontario Tuition Freeze will be lifted this year. He did this after an infusion of an additional 6 Billion Dollars into Ontario Post-Secondary Education system. The Tuition Freeze was designed to create stability in PSE in Ontario after tuition more than tripled during the period between the Peterson Liberal Government and the McGuinty Liberal Government. (1990 – 2003) The Tuition increases began under the party that the CFS is most closely affiliated with; the NDP. During the Ontario NDP government, tuition increased by 53%. It more that doubled from that during the Tory government from 1995 – 2003. Despite the complete craziness of the NDP tuition fee increases that started it all, in the 1999 and 2003 elections, the CFS strongly supported the NDP. This included campaigns to remove sitting opposition Liberal MPP’s in favour of NDP members. Some blame this direction of energy by the CFS in part for the reelection of some Tory MPPs in 1999 that could have been defeated if students were mobilized to vote for a Liberal in ridings that the NDP could not win. The money spent against the Liberals could have easily been spent against the Tories in this election. In the period between the 1999 and 2003 elections, the Ontario Young Liberals (the youth wing of the Liberal party) called for some stability in PSE in Ontario in the way of a tuition freeze and review of PSE in Ontario. The McGuinty government followed the recommendation of the youth wing and has done this. Now the review is done and McGuinty stated the following:

“Yes (tuition will go up), and the price of milk, bread, rent, mortgage, houses will go up. The issue is by how much,” McGuinty told students. “You would like me to promise tuition fees will never go up again and, in an ideal world, I would love to be able to do that but I can’t. I have to live in this world,” he said.

Of course, he is right all those things go up in price every year but they do not go up 53% percent in less than five years like tuition did under the NDP (of which the CFS is a defuncto youth wing) government of 1990 – 1995. Come on CFS! CFS fees go up every single year. How can CFS be opposed to a reasonable increase in tuition when the CFS their fees increase every single year!
In response to this statement, the CFS is organizing a massive campaign against the Liberal government and working with the NDP to defeat the government if tuition increases even by inflation. All indications from the goverment is that increases will be modest within one or two percent of the rate of inflation.
Basically, the CFS position is no increase to tuition instead freezes until hell freezes over. They know that this is going to fail but it is a perfect reason to then use student money to campaign for their friends in the NDP.

Facebook, the very popular University Social Network site has expanded to include the University of Manitoba (finally).
Do not know what Facebook is? Read this Wired Article to find out more. According to Wikipedia, the site has over 2.5 million registered users worldwide now.
Then get on over to Facebook University of Manitoba and register (you have to use your @cc.umanitoba.ca email address) now!

http://umanitoba.facebook.com/

The results of the CFS referendum are in…. .after rigging the rules and way out spending the NO campaign, the CFS was only able to win by a slim margin. I would like to see how the CFS would do in a fair campaign where spending limits exist (the CFS is allowed to spend thousands of dollars), all expenses must be claimed (the CFS likes to hide expenses), only students campaigning (CFS flys in a lot of full-time staff to campaign full-time but only allow the NO side to have students who have full-time classes and cannot campaign 24/7) and the election board is unbias (unlike the CFS loaded committee which makes some dictatorship “elections” look fair in comparison). As one can see from the results, the CFS does not have a mandate to speak for students. It is too bad that almost 45% of students at U of Sask now have a new student fee that will increase every year. (That is another entry – The CFS increases their fees every single year yet call for Tuition Freezes and Fee Freezes with the hope of clawbacks to those fees. If the CFS is truly about Fee Freezes, why don’t they freeze their fee?)
From www.ussu.ca:

REFERENDUM RESULTS
On October 4-6 of 2005, undergraduate students at the University of Saskatchewan voted in a referendum on membership in the Canadian Federation of Students.
The unofficial CFS Referendum results:
Ballots cast – 3562
Yes votes – 1968 (55.4%)
No votes – 1584 (44.6%)
Spoiled – 10

I have begun to categorize all my entries about student lobbying organizations on one page:
http://www.joeycoleman.ca/archives/categories/student_lobbying/
Check it out for more CFS / CASA and future OUSA entries.
A comment as been added below which points out some interesting things that happened at USSU that should not have happened and how the executive kept the Council pretty much in the dark. It is interesting to note how the CFS rules were never made available and the “rules” changed. CFS has said time and time again that the Election Oversight Committee will have two CFS staffers (who usually campaign for the CFS during the campaign) and two students from the school they are taking over. This time the “rules” changed to two people appointed by the Executive who are not actually students. Interesting to say the least, and in their best doublespeak (man this is more confusing than 1984) they said the rules were actually that the other two would be “USSU Representatives”. The more details that arise, the more that one is amazed at how hard the students of USask had to work to make the “Referendum” a close vote. Clearly, if it had been a fair vote, the CFS would have lost.

This morning McMaster University posted the following to their website:

Difficulty in reaching some internet sites
Posted on October 06, 2005 at 03:52 PM.
Two major internet backbone suppliers, Cogent and Level 3 Communications, have abruptly stopped exchanging information with each other. Because McMaster has its primary internet connection with Cogent, certain network areas are unreachable. McMaster does have a second source of internet supply through FibreWired Hamilton.
Until this gets resolved, users are going to see a varying set of unreachable web sites, email addresses, and blocked traffic to and from sites supplied solely by Level 3 Communications. Unfortunately, there is no way to know by examining an address if that site is sole-sourced through Level 3. We hope this situation is resolved soon.
More detail can be found online.

This is why I have not been able to access Wikipedia during class. I usually run Wiki when my profs talk about topics so that I can have all the background information I need right in front of me. Due to this internet dispute, I cannot get Wiki because it is on the Level 3 network. This is very annoying to say the least.

CFS in order to make sure that students had to be supervised by their full-time paid staff overruled U of Sask’s Students’ Union rules on voting. Basically, the CFS needs to make sure that they get the $170,000 dollars a year they are looking for from U of Sask students. Especially since they have spent thousands if not over ten thousand dollars in attempting to secure this money to add to their budget of over $10 million dollars. The following is from the Sheaf:

Can you imagine if, for the next federal election, the government announced people in the army and navy, those people working out in the bush or people traveling overseas couldn’t vote simply for the fact they weren’t able to get to a voting booth?
“Fuck you all,” the Ben Kingsley look-alike we call our Elections Commissioner would say.
“You have a job taking you away from the voting booth? It’s your own damn fault for being so responsible. Maybe you’ll be able to vote next time around.”
To bring it down to reality, a portion of U of S students were unable to mark an ‘X’ anywhere on the ballot during the recent Canadian Federation of Students referendum. These students, who pay tuition and pay their USSU fees but happen to study on a U of S campus in another city or intern outside of Saskatoon, were barred from participating in the referendum that, depending on the results (not available at press time), could lead to an increase in their student fees.
The reason for their exclusion?
Paper ballots, which replaced the online voting system the USSU has used for every election and referendum for years. But couldn’t those off-campus students mail in their ballots? What a stupid question. Of course not. That would be playing right into the hands of those dastardly supporters of a fair election process.
The body chosen to look after the fairness of the recent referendum; “to ensure a clean campaign,” as they say “is the Referendum Oversight Committee, consisting of two USSU members and two CFS members. Their reasoning for the decision to ban offcampus students from voting came out of the CFS constitution. The ROC said because the CFS constitution doesn’t recognize online ballots, paper is the way to go. Poring over the same constitution, one would have trouble finding the section that states CFS recognizes paper ballots and not electronic ones. There is no mention of either voting method. The rubber-stamp called the ROC appears to have bent over for nearly every CFS demand, whether it be campaigning in classrooms or the uncertainy around campaign spending limits; “both which have clearly defined rules in USSU campaign policy. There looks to be no compromise on any point of contention over referendum rules. The decision on online voting, made by laws that do not appear to exist, is odd. I suggest students defecate in either the left or right corner of the voting booth, depending on whether they are voting yes or no to membership in CFS, as another voting method. There is no mention of feces being an acceptable or unacceptable way of voting, much like paper. Perhaps a bit of shit will prompt those people running future referendums to explicitly make their preference of voting system into law.
The last presidential election in the States was marred by allegations of elections violations because the electronic voting system wasn’t as safe as paper ballots. But there are no Yes or No supporters who own U of S computer terminals.
There are no shady Yes or No elections officials who will take the computers in for “maintenance.” In fact, the USSU has felt so confident in online voting that they haven’t changed the system for years. There are several colleges affected by the exclusion of off-campus voters. Councilors Mark Taylor (Pharmacy and Nutrition) and Gina Otte (Kinesiology) expressed their disappointment with the ROC’s decision at last week’s University Student Council meeting. The Colleges of Engineering and Education also have many students who are interning outside of Saskatoon and share similar concerns with their fellow councilors. It doesn’t matter if off-campus students make a difference in the referendum, either for the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ side. The problem is that two organizations; ”CFS and the USSU, both supporters of the democratic process” have tarnished the referendum results with their undemocratic decisions

Reading this makes clear why the CFS is opposed to allowing these students to vote. They are in faculties where students are less likely to be supporters of the CFS hence the CFS needs to protect their financial investment and will do anything to prevent these students from voting.

Since I wrote on my blog about CFS’s practice of cypersquating, I have had tons of visits and given a few interviews to student newspaper across the country. I did not give an interview to The Sheaf at U of Sask. I was reading The Sheaf tonight and found this to be one of the best pieces written about the whole affair.

When I learned the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) registered the domain www.casa-acae.ca, that pettiness feeling crept up my spine again. CASA-ACAE is the bilingual acronym for the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA), the other national student lobby group along with CFS. The Canadian Internet Registration Authority lists the Ontario chapter of CFS as the owner of the domain name.
CASA doesn’t really need the domain, however; the French version of their website is under www.casa.ca/french. I’m glad to see CFS spending students’ money on a useless domain name.
Just politics as usual. No matter what level of government—provincial, federal, student—the same old games are played. How wonderful that those involved with student politics are learning the ropes at such a young age; it’s not uncommon to see representatives from CASA and CFS move onto political jobs with federal and provincial political parties.
Brad Levine went from CFS president to working for the federal NDP. Alex Usher was CASA president and moved on to work in a Liberal-appointed job with the government. Right here at the U of S, Jason Aebig went from USSU president to CASA president to working in communications for the Saskatchewan Liberals.
CASA and CFS is yet another sandbox for our future politicos to mess around in. Except they’re not messing around with Monopoly money, it’s the students who are paying for this playdate.

Read more here: http://www.thesheaf.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=898&Itemid=44

http://www.thesil.ca/

I have not updated my website for a few days. I was seriously considering running in a Student Representative Assembly by-election in my faculty and I did not want to risk getting fined for pre-campaigning. After much thought and consideration, I have decided to not run for a SRA seat this year. I already have plenty of committments and am actively making a difference without being on the SRA. I am presently involved with too many activities as is and am considering resigning from a role or two that I presently have. The reason for this is that I believe my studies are hurting because of all my involvements. I believe I will most likely resign from Dining Committee as the improvements that I have suggested did not require me to be on the committee to get them done.
Last night, I went to Guelph. I took the 1745 bus up to Guelph. In Guelph, I went for coffee with a friend. I did not tell any of my other friends in Guelph that I would be visiting. I was hoping to have coffee with my one friend without anyone else knowing. I was going to be staying at another friends house so I knew that there was a risk of everyone finding out I was there. The plan did not work. I had to take a city bus from the place I was staying to the coffeehouse. Three stops after I boarded, two of my friends boarded the bus. The look on their face was priceless, they could not believe it was me. It was very funny because they had no idea that I was in Guelph and could not have possibly expected me to show up in Guelph on some random school night. So basically it was known I was in Guelph.
I went to Williams Coffee Pub in Guelph. They make some pretty nice desserts. After this, I went to a friend’s place where everyone had gathered to watch the hockey game. I have lost my love of the NHL in the last year and cannot believe how boring the new rules are. Again the NHL is neglecting Canada in the hope of capturing customers in the Southern United States. It is not going to work.
Yesterday was the first day of winter in WinniWinterpeg. It is hard to imagine Winter in Southern Ontario yet. I know that it is October and everything but the daytime high yesterday was 28 above zero. We are going to have a drop in tempatures this weekend with daytime highs of only 15 degrees above zero.
Currently, I am on the bus back from Guelph and the bus is taking a detour along Old York Road in Dundas. This is the first time in a couple of years that I have been along this route. The city of Hamilton is visible along this route as it is elevated about the city. Hamilton is a very beautiful city when viewed from its northwest approachs. The campus of McMaster is visible as well, it is rare for me to see the north side of the campus from any distance. It is very beautiful as well.
well, time to get my books out and study.

As my readers at U of M may be aware from The Paulinian in the spring, I was putting my “money” on Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina for the new Pope. I was not right but according to reports that were on the internet only two weeks ago, I was close.
From CNN

My webhost has now upgraded my server and changed my plan (at my request). So I now have uncapped bandwidth, unlimited SQL databases, and 20GB of server space!
Sadly, my schoolwork is not so nice to me and I will not be able to play around with my new toys for awhile.

I watched the Tom Hanks movie The Terminal the other day and it was enjoyable. Then I was reading a blog which pointed out that it is based upon a true story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merhan_Karimi_Nasseri