NEWS & UPDATES
Nov. 13 Message from QUFA to Members
Dear QUFA Members,
The Special General Meeting originally scheduled for November 12 will now be held on December 3, 2025. An official meeting notice will be sent to you with more details.
We apologize for confusion around the scheduling of this meeting. The originally scheduled meeting was postponed because QUFA’s original notice to the membership, delivered on Wednesday October 29 at 2:26, did not accord with QUFA’s longstanding practice of providing fourteen full days of notice for meetings. The Members who submitted the request for the original meeting provided QUFA with their material well before October 29. The failure to provide notice that accorded with the practice of giving 24 hours X 14 days’ notice lies with QUFA.
In our email postponing the meeting, we noted that additional concerns had been raised by QUFA Members. Those concerns related to the General Meeting process, which had to be resolved before proceeding to a meeting, and not to whether the meeting or motion was properly constituted. Our constitution allows for 20 Members to request that a General Meeting be called, and the 20 Members who requested this meeting followed the correct process.
We look forward to dealing with the substance of the Special General meeting on December 3, 2025, and, again, apologize for confusion and upset caused by our earlier communications.
Sincerely,
Karen Rudie,
QUFA President
Nov. 11 Email from Divestment Campaign Team to Faculty
Dear Colleagues,
Last week, you would have received QUFA’s email regarding the postponement of the Special Meeting on the motion to divest our pensions from weapons and occupation. From our discussions with QUFA, we understand that due to the network outage on Wednesday morning, October 29th, QUFA was unable to circulate the notice to members until 2:30 pm that afternoon. One member objected to the timing, claiming that the notice missed the Robert’s Rules requirement for 14 days' advance notice by four hours. We understand that QUFA’s practice is to count hours, though this is not documented in the bylaws, and Robert’s Rules explicitly state that calendar days, not hours, determine the window for notice. The meeting was postponed nonetheless.
What’s most important is that this is a carefully researched and crucial motion, developed in consultation with colleagues at our sister unions (the University of Toronto Faculty Association, CUPE 3902, CUPE 1281, CUPE 1230, USW 1998, and the Trent University Faculty Association), who have already passed similar motions. Despite vague statements about member concerns in the email about the postponement, none have been presented, and the motion will be heard at a rescheduled special general meeting. We continue to stand firmly behind it and urge you to do the same.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us. Otherwise, we look forward to your support once QUFA announces a new vote date.
Please sign the pledge, especially if you would like to receive reminders and updates from us. We will not spam you or share your contact information.
We look forward to seeing you at the rescheduled (online) meeting!
Yours in solidarity,
The Divestment Campaign Team