All students are equal, but some are more equal than others. That's the basic principle behind the voting system for the Table de Concertation, a new association of which the Students' Society will soon be a founding member.
McGill students have been lacking provincial political representation since SSMU's falling outs with the Quebec Federation of University Students (FEUQ) in 2006, and the Canadian Federation of Students in 2007. To remedy that, SSMU is founding a new provincial association along with students' societies from the University of Laval and the University of Sherbrooke. Societies from the University of Quebec at Montreal should also be on board soon. The TDC would be more streamlined than larger organizations like FEUQ or the CFS, while still allowing its members to lobby the government in a concerted manner.
There's a lot to like about the TDC. For one thing, students wouldn't be footing the bill: the organization could fund itself through government grants. Also, as a provincial organization without a permanent staff, the TDC is less likely to become bloated or bureaucratic. SSMU has been unable to effectively lobby the provincial government on its own, and the TDC provides the best way to go about that unpleasant, but necessary, task.
Unfortunately SSMU would be a political pauper under the proposed TDC by-laws. Rather than allot votes proportionally to the number of students each society represents, the TDC by-laws use a Byzantine allocation system: societies with 2,000 members or less get a single vote; those with 2,001 to 10,000 members get two votes; and those with more than 10,000 members get three votes.
Here's the catch: UQAM students in different faculties are represented by different students' societies. With 20,000 members, SSMU would have three votes, while the two UQAM societies that are considering membership-representing a total of 6,600 students-would have four votes. That gives UQAM students roughly quadruple the voting power of McGill undergraduates, and makes it easy for them to start a voting bloc.
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