On November 2, 2016, the Canadian
Federation of Students (CFS) has called for a Canada-wide day of action
against tuition increases. The Revolutionary Student Movement (RSM)
unequivocally supports the call for a day of action. While we have
differences of both political line and tactics with the CFS, the RSM
will always support action against tuition fees and we commend the CFS
for this initiative. We urge all of our members and supporters to help
with the organizing efforts in their various locales towards making the
November 2nd day of action huge.
While we support the day of action, we
feel it necessary to qualify our support. Our position towards the CFS
–that it is an ossified, anti-democratic, bureaucratic, and reformist
organization that serves as a barrier to the creation of a combative
student movement in English Canada – remains unchanged. The CFS did not
call for a day of action out of a genuine desire to launch a truly
mass-based anti-tuition campaign, nor out of a desire to increase the
level of militancy in its current activities against the rising cost of
tuition. Instead, it will again use the day of action as part of its
lobbying efforts, as a means of cynically using the mobilization of
students to provide weight to the annual meetings that CFS bureaucrats
have with politicians. The CFS is open about this fact (though we doubt
they will be open about this during the mobilizations this fall!):
CFS-Ontario writes that its current campaign, Fight the Fees, has been launched in preparation for the 2018 Ontario elections.
It is worth pointing out that this basic
strategy of the CFS –mobilizations to supplement lobbying- has been the
basic strategy of the CFS since its creation. And sure enough, aside
from a few minor victories here and there, the strategy has been
ineffective: even the relatively benign demands that the CFS makes of
the federal and various provincial governments are ignored. In the
context of the looming deregulation of tuition fees in Ontario in 2017 –
an act that will serve as a blueprint for other provincial governments
outside of Ontario to follow -, mounting student debt, increasing
tuition, and a lack of jobs for youth and students, the inability of the
CFS to actually win gains for its members shows increasingly the need
for revolutionary students to break from the CFS.
Furthermore, the demands of the CFS do
not go far enough. The current campaign and day of action is directed
only against tuition fee increases. The RSM stands for the
complete abolition of tuition and ancillary fees, the cancellation of
all student debt, and for complete open access to all post-secondary
institutions in Canada. Only by eliminating fees and entrance
requirements can education become truly accessible for the working class
in Canada. The RSM stands for access to post-secondary education for
all Indigenous people, and an anti-colonial aspect to all education
programs. The RSM stands for education to be put in the service of
people and not profit; we argue that research should be for the benefit
of all people and not the benefit of corporations, and that education
should serve struggles for justice and liberation. Finally, the RSM
stands for the democratic control of post-secondary institutions by
students, support staff, community members, and faculty. And this is
just the beginning. On all of these issues –issues which we see as being
at the core of fighting for access to education- the CFS has very
little to say.
In 2012, students in Quebec launched a
strike which brought the Quebec government to its knees. The RSM
continues to argue that this is an example that deserves to be emulated
in the rest of Canada. Since then, the CFS has done absolutely nothing
to try to learn from and implement the lessons of the Maple Spring
throughout the rest of Canada. The lobbying efforts of the CFS are a
dead end; the only way to force the hand of the government on the issue
of tuition is to strike. The RSM holds that the creation of a genuinely
democratic student movement is a precondition for student strikes in the
rest of Canada. In place of the CFS bureaucratic and corporate style of
student unionism, where only a handful of elected officials are
consulted on the affairs of the student association, the RSM will
continue to work for general assemblies of all members as the highest
decision making bodies of their respective student unions. In order to
win we must strike, and in order to strike we need democratic control
over our student unions.
To this end, the RSM encourages its members and supporters to use the November 2nd
day of action to break further with the failed politics and tactics of
the CFS. While we will throw ourselves into the mobilizations for the
day of action, we will also continue to struggle against the CFS
bureaucrats who seek to use the day of action to maintain their
stranglehold over their respective student unions. We invite all
students to join the revolutionary contingents that are being planned
across Canada as part of the November 2nd rallies.
For a truly democratic student movement in English Canada!
Towards a student strike for the elimination of tuition fees!
All out November 2nd!
