The basics: Meet the candidates

What you need to know before the night begins.

The Student Federation of the University of Ottawa (SFUO) has six executive positions.

President/Bilingualism

For the first time in the 34 year history of the Federation, the position of President will not be on the ballot for one simple reason: The sole candidate for the job failed his bilingualism test. All candidates for the executive must be bilingual (French/English) as the SFUO and the University of Ottawa pride themselves on being bilingual institutions. Recently, the Grad student association (GSAÉD) followed suit, imposing a bilingualism test on all members planning to run for the GSAÉD executive.

Background information on this story can be found here, here (Fulcrum) and here and here (Rotonde)


Vice-President Finance

Description is pretty self-explanatory.

The VP Finance manages a budget of roughly 13 million dollars annually. The current VP Finance, Dean Haldenby, was planning on running for President before he failed his bilingualism exam. Amazingly, only one candidate ran for the position, thus almost ensuring she will be elected. Roxanne Dubois has a very "active" platform. Contrary to her predecessors, she plans on using her position to encourage certain types of behaviours. Interesting points consist of taxing plastic bags at businesses ran by the SFUO, subsidising coffee for students who bring their mugs, etc. Also, for the first time in recent memory, she has also spoken against SFUO surpluses (over the two last years, the surpluses have amounted to over 1 million dollars). It is a major shift from her predecessors, but she seems to have formed a concensus over her candidacy. A new face to student politics, Dubois has been previously been an editor at the French language newspaper, La Rotonde.

Her platform can be found here.

Vice-President Communications

Description and name pretty straight forward.

Enter high drama. If most other races are (relatively) predictable, this is going to be, without a doubt, the most interesting race of the evening. François Picard is the incumbent, Julie Séguin is the challenger.

The position will only be in its second year and Picard has been the only one to hold it before. He has been criticised by many for being "too political", "pro-cfs" and most of all, not sticking to the portfolio. Enter Julie Séguin. She brings with her a "communications plan", consisting of utilising new forums to get the message out.

The major idea that came out of this debate was Picard's proposal for a General assembly. Amazingly, the SFUO has no such forum. Even more amazingly, no one has proposed to have one before this year. (The SFUO had General assemblies in the 80s-90s).

Séguin has run a more effective campaign on the "posters" and "banners" scale. Her online presence seems to be a tad more efficient than that of Picard's. She also has a twin sister campaigning for her (double the class presentations). Picard is the outgoing executive, which is always a bonus. He has been seen all year at major SFUO events and his idea has made its way into other peoples' platforms, including Séguin's which initially opposed the idea.

On the question of CFS, both present similar positions. Picard is obviously in favour of CFS, but has stated that his official position is to let students vote on the question. This is similar to Séguin's, which is more or less that she is reluctant to join, but feels it is important that students vote on the matter. Curious note: many of her supporters and volunteers are staunchly opposed to CFS. As much as this issue is fascinating for some, it has hardly come up during the campaign.

VP communications also deals with bilingualism. No difference between both candidates. Both in favour of bilingualism.

Many people on (and outside of) campus will be cheering for one of these two candidates for reasons that have little to do with the portfolio but more for what these candidates represent.

Séguin's platform can be found here.
Picard's platform can be found here.

Vice-President University Affairs

VPUA runs campaigns, does all the "political" work for the Fed, in charge of Student appeal centre, etc.

Enter Seamus Wolfe, outgoing VP University Affairs. The most polarising student politician on this executive. Loud, pro-CFS, progressive, Wolfe expresses himself, and expresses himself often. Which can be a good thing for a position that is in charge of SFUO campaigns.

Wolfe got into some trouble this year, notably during the Ontario Elections when the SFUO took a stand in favour of Mixed Proportional Representation. His attitude has been simple. "Who cares?" And in a way, he is not wrong. He has consistently been able to move his projects forward and faced no opposition in last year's election... And very little in this year's.

Not to knock Blake Thibault, who is a good member of the BOA of the SFUO, he has simply not run a good campaign. In fact, most students would be surprised to learn that he was actually running. He has told many people in private that he is running so that Seamus would not be left unopposed for a second year in a row. He has participated in debates and his platform is basically a "Fuck you Seamus." He is opposed to CFS, but... in favour of holding a referendum to join. He likes SFUO campaigns, but feels they should not take stands but be geared towards "educate yourself". If he had put up posters/banners... Ran a website, done class presentations... His candidacy would have had a decent chance.

Sadly, for democracy, Wolfe will most likely win, (almost) unopposed, for a second year running. Just for the record, this is not a knock to Wolfe, who did a good job as VP UA in his first term. He will be the first to say that he would have liked a better race.

Seamus' platform can be found here.
Blake's platform can be found here. (This is the best link I could find, unfortunately. The English version is blank. If you run this platform in Babelfish, you will get his English platform. He literally wrote it in English, ran it in Babelfish, handed it in French. I'm still unsure as to where the original version went.)

VP Social affairs

Pretty straight forward.

This is the only contested position with someone not running for re-election. (Enter surprise). Joël Larose is running against Nicholas Laplante. Both candidates could not be any more different. Joël Larose is president of his student association (communications), whereas Nicholas Laplante was the director of the Foodbank.

Larose is the favourite to win this race, if only be his involvement with the SFUO and especially the SFUO's social programming. He can be found at almost any (every) SFUO event. This is both a good and bad thing. The theme of his campaign is "community" and bringing together different partners on campus to organise events. This is pretty straightforward stuff. His biggest asset is his experience.

Laplante breaks all initial conceptions about the position. He wants distinct events for Francophones, because "bilingual" events turn out to be English events. He wants to diversify the portfolio, inserting cultural events to the programming, a first for the SFUO. He also wants to have more events held during the day, to allow more students to participate.

Larose agrees with most projects brought forth by Laplante, but seems to disagree with Laplante's style. When asked what they liked and disliked from each other's platforms, Larose criticised the fact that Laplante was proposing "French only" advertising for French events and "English only" advertising for English ones. Laplante dissed Larose's platform by saying it is a bullet point presentation.

Larose did not come up with major ideas. Laplante did not soften his image at all for this very "sociable" position. Larose is the "establishment" guy. Laplante is not. It is basically style vs. substance. And ironically, one can assume that most of Laplante's ideas will be adopted next year, regardless of the executive.

Nicolas Laplante's platform can be found here.
Joël Larose's platform can be found here.

Vice-President Student Affairs

Essentially the person in charge of student clubs and services.

Danika Brisson is the outgoing VP. She was a complete outsider last year and beat some pretty "established" individuals. Her opponent is Liz Doneathy.

Liz is the candidate of change. "Bring the students back into "student affairs."" was the way she started the race.

These two candidates agree on most things. It is hard to beat an incumbent, and to do so, one has to be extremely effective. Liz was a good candidate and she is clearly qualified for the job at hand, but she lacked the killer instinct in this campaign and in the end, it is really a question of distinguishing oneself, something she was unable to do. Nonetheless, the fact that Doneathy ran actually forced Danika to campaign strong, which is always a good thing. Doneathy also represents a large portion of students that feel that the position should be more focused on the portfolio, and less on parrallel tasks, such as "Green initiatives".

Danika Brisson's platform can be found here.
Liz Doneathy's platform can be found here. (Apparently this is not her blog address. I am still looking for it everywhere, but this is the one found in The Fulcrum, and I am unable to find her's. I am assuming this is not it. Here is another link to her platform.

UPDATE: Liz Doneathy's official website can be found here.