Monday, March 3, 2008

By-election campaign: Renaud Garner says "Progress, not change"

I just spoke with Renaud-Philippe Garner and I must say, wow. Those were the most original interview responses I have ever received from an SFUO candidate.

I will not post the entire exchange here, as I will do features on every candidate later on in the campaign, but for those wondering where his website is, Renaud is a firm believer in using the resources we already have. "The common good", as he said. He has submitted his platform to the SFUO and he is waiting for the Elections Office to put it online.

He will not be postering, as that is a wasteful and ineffective way to campaign. "It's campaigning at a distance with cliché'd slogans and jumbo-sized images."

He wants Progress, not Change. What's the difference? "You can change the bars of a prison cell, but it's still going to be prison bars." He wants an ethics committee at the SFUO, he wants the SFUO to look at the quality of the education given at the University of Ottawa and he is suggesting a reduction in the salary of the executive, to name just a few ideas.

He will be doing classroom presentations every 90 minutes until the end of the campaign.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Because class presentations every 90 minutes aren't wasteful. Certainly not of students' time.

Anonymous said...

Posters don't work? Most people canvassed believed that they do... Well, thats interesting if nothing else.

Anonymous said...

"He will be doing classroom presentations every 90 minutes until the end of the campaign"

Does that mean he will be doing class presentation at 10pm,11:30pm, 1am, 2:30am etc...
Now thats dedication (and he says posters don't work, Im sure his every 90 min class presentation strategy will)

Anonymous said...

A few problems here:

1) Reducing the SFUO Executive salary is going to just prevent qualified people from doing it because it will not be worth their while to take a whole year off and not make a fair amount of money for the work the will be doing. And if it becomes less than a fulltime job, the students aren't going to be represented properly!

2) Progress not change is a cliched slogan.

Just saying...

Anonymous said...

I agree with Mark J with regards to the SFUO Executive salaries.

I believe they receive $30,000 (if I'm not mistaken) for jobs that are easily more than full time if you were to actually count the hours you are required to put in.

This is most likely close to the national average and in line with what the average college graduate makes (at least when I was in college two years ago).

While I wouldn't call the salary "competitive", it's a fair wage for a very challenging job.

I would need to see Renaud-Philippe's full platform to completely understand his rationale with this. Wassim - any idea when they're supposed to be up?

Anonymous said...

Hardly an official document, by a starting point for student union salaries is here:

http://www.studentunion.ca/compensation.html

Also keep in mind that the SFUO Executive is restricted to how many classes they can take during their mandate so they can fully concentrate on their duties.

Wassim said...

Ryan,

His logic was as follows: Because SFUO executives do not have to pay tuition, they should be making as much as the average student makes working part-time through the year and full-time through a summer.

In Renaud's opinion, a student going to class + working + homework = same amount of time as a full-time SFUO executive.

Virginie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Why arent the platforms online on the SFUO website???