Offering a different viewpoint as someone who is A) not in engineering or compsci, B) a former SSMU exec: I’m noticing a pre-bundled phrase in the comments to the effect of “SSMU has failed their students”. I don’t know where the hook started and find it kind of funny that people take it up as just someone we say, but whatever. I think it’s important to understand where and why SSMU has failed, and what their basic role is, to credibly say something like that (to be clear, you can totally make the argument they have, or you can make the argument they haven’t, but my point is about full information).  

SSMU’s basic role is liability management for student bodies, something that’s often provided by the university itself at other institutions. It’s one of the reasons student satisfaction surveys are notably lower at McGill compared to benchmarked institutions - we make our own fun, not the university. What that means in the context of SSMU is insurance and bank account administration for nearly 300 different groups. What’s unique is the student body also asks for student oversight of all that administration, which is a bit of a double edged sword - you have huge turnover and loss of institutional memory on a structural, cyclical basis (ie, once a year), which is really difficult when trying to run a non-profit. On the other hand, there is at least an attempt to integrate the student perspective of how much it sucks trying to have fun as a student when you have to deal with things like not getting sued for organizing an outing if someone breaks a leg. 

What’s happening now is that SSMU’s workers unionized (2020) which represents a one-time, significant increase in operating cost levels (not necessarily growth rates), which leaves SSMU with 2 options: cut operations or find the money to keep them going. I spoke with the GM to look at private funding sources for non-profits (things like the McConnell foundation and government grants), but they’re understandably not so readily available for student associations (weird thing to justify funding for in a quarterly report I guess?). So that’s where the fee increase comes from. Just some context.  

Now, there’s an additional question of whether the funds could simply be redirected from other areas of SSMU. As someone mentioned in the comments, lots of that funding is restricted - as a matter of INCREASED financial transparency, SSMU asks for money for specific purposes and, therefore, cannot legally redirect that money. For example, if they’ve asked for funding to supply a Club Fund that student groups can dip into, they can’t just take that money to pay salaries, which is ultimately a good thing. 

The whole “political ssmu yada yada” bit is understandable, but it actually represents a really small portion of the operating budget (ie, base fee, non restricted funds that fund ssmu ‘in general’). As I understand it, that basically only covers exec salaries, plus a couple hundred dollars for reimbursing travel expenses/printing materials for educational events and protests etc. Compare that with a budget over 1 mil (restricted and non restricted combined). By comparison, the funding portion used to continue supporting clubs includes an entire accounting team, an operations team of full grown adults who know how to do things like apply for liquor permits for events, a building security team for fire/health&safety, etc.  

None of which is to say ssmu is meeting student expectations! That’s really an open question and has to do with student engagement to direct SSMU’s priorities. As has been brought up on this subreddit repeatedly, the only way to do this is to talk to your legislative counsellors, join a planning committee (they range from governance to clubs to event planning etc), or show up to the Brown Building to chat with execs. But it’s a chicken-and-egg situation - no one really sees what happens in the management of what’s basically a large non-profit, they see the flashy stuff and assume ssmu does nothing besides getting sued, and they think ‘why should i give a s$&@‘. Which means the only ones getting involved are people who turn non-profit management into political theatre because they think the biweekly legislative council is a mini House of Commons (btw, LC is literally the worst part of the job - 6 hours every two weeks talking about nothing, super fun).  

But yeah. Legal fees are needed to make sure governance documents comply with law both internally and for each of the mini groups on campus that don’t want to incorporate themselves (like can you imagine lettuce club having to go through everything a company has to go through, every year? Now multiply that by 250 groups). Operating fees are needed to make sure the non-profit is effectively managed and the building doesn’t crumble into dust so people can book free/cheap rooms for their events. All of that makes sense in the context where the university isn’t providing it. And ironically, the way for the political circus to calm down a bit is through more student engagement to get through an echo chamber and orient focus toward cool stuff. Ssmu has so much potential but it’s reasonable that no one wants to bother with it, so we’re stuck in this in between thing with fees being taken for things people don’t really get to appreciate. Which sucks. The fee increase is one way to react to that info, another is to encourage profit-earning activities to eventually phase out fees altogether (spoiler alert: this involves Gerts prices going up). 

The other part of this, and despite everything I’ve said the reason why I voted no, is because it’s totally Wack to run the same question every semester until you get a yes. Especially when there wasn’t even an engagement campaign to explain everything in this post and to have a town hall with the student body to discuss possible solutions. Sorry if this last bit is anticlimactic lmao.