On Wednesday, students at Toronto Metropolitan University finally received an update from the students’ union (TMSU) about the results of the 2025 general election, and it wasn’t good news. In a statement posted to their website and sent out to the student body, the board of directors wrote that the March election results are “null and void.”
“Unfortunately, we’ve reached the conclusion that the election process that has unfolded to date was deeply compromised and that any results cannot be considered legitimate. We have also come to the conclusion that, at this point in time, due to circumstances beyond TMSU’s control, the organization would not be able to run a new fair and transparent election.”
This decision follows an ongoing investigation that the union says began in December, after an anonymous individual sent emails filled with allegations targeted at TMSU staff, executives, and board members.
While students awaited the election itself and results from the March vote, the chief returning officer (CRO) posted 29 rulings (detailing campaign violations and use of hate speech) and the election and referenda committee (ERC) posted 11 rulings based on appeals.
The TMSU wrote in their April 8 statement that they will appoint a new interim executive director that will in turn “undertake a process to appoint board and executive members,” with guidance from their legal counsel. As a result of that investigation, some individuals have already been suspended with pay. Until a new board is appointed, the current members will continue to serve.
But this isn’t the union’s first brush with controversy. TMSU has been dogged by tumultuous election cycles and allegations of financial corruption for many years.
In 2019, the (previously named) Ryerson Student Union (RSU) made international headlines when president Ram Ganesh and vice-president operations Savreen Gosal were accused of using student funding for personal gain. Ganesh was impeached by the board, Gosal was suspended, and the remaining executives were removed from office. Ultimately, the RSU chose not to pursue legal action against these executives due to the high cost of litigation.
In April 2023, TMSU filed a $900,000 lawsuit against five past executives and employees; Siddanth Satish, Vaishali Vinayak, Tarmanjit Mann, Akibul Hoque and Maleha Yasmin. The suit alleged that these former students’ union staff colluded to steal TMSU funds through means such as unauthorized payments to third-party vendors.
And the following month, TMSU filed a $375,000 lawsuit against board of directors members Areesha Quershi, Joel Kuriakose and Muhammad Maaz Rashid for allegedly colluding to undermine the integrity of the 2023 general election. The union says that the case was settled with an undisclosed monetary payout. The results of the election were disqualified, and a by-election was held later that year instead.
But the TMSU is not the only students’ union in the province 一 let alone country 一 that has broken elections by-laws and faced allegations of financial mismanagement.
In 2011, students at the Kwantlen Polytechnic University voted to remove 13 directors within their students’ union after a reported misuse of $2 million in student funds. In 2012, staff at the McMaster Association of Part-time Students allegedly used student fees to fund birthday parties, bridal showers and a vacation to Rome.
In 2018, the executives and staff of the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa (SFUO) were accused of misappropriating upwards of $20,000 in student funding, “with expenses ranging from $950 Louis Vuitton glasses to $400 haircuts.” This led the university to terminate its operating agreement with the SFUO and, after a 2019 referendum, students voted to replace the SFUO with an entirely new union.
Justin Patrick, a recent PhD graduate whose field of study includes student government, studied that particular case in his 2024 dissertation. He found that “these scandals involving public money are the culmination of years of structural democratic backsliding and rising authoritarianism in student unions.”
“A Vicious Cycle”
In his research, Patrick found that low voter turnout increased the risk of corruption.
“You can get not only more fringe groups coming into power, but they can pass things to amend constitutions and guiding documents to stay in power and make it more difficult for opposition students and parties and slates… to take office,” Patrick said in an interview with OTR.
“So it might make the transition of power more difficult. It might lead to an entrenched establishment being there for a very long time and being able to make a lot of changes to how the student government works to the point where it might not be fair anymore.”
Since the most recent 2025 TMSU election was disqualified, no data on voter turnout is available. The last publicly available document displaying voting results was for the 2023 TMSU by-election. Only 1,906 ballots were cast, and there was a voter turnout of 4.3 per cent.
As OTR previously reported, no notice was given on TMSU’s official social media accounts ahead of this year’s nomination period, which contravenes by-law 4.2.1 in the Elections Procedures Code. The only notice that was provided at that time, was a brief text-only statement under two large colourful visual promotions in an email newsletter.
“If turnout is suppressed, if it’s not promoted for years and years and years, it erodes the culture of participation, and students are less likely to care about the student union and go and mobilize,” Patrick told OTR.
He says voter apathy is “a vicious cycle.”
Where Is The Money Going?
At TMU, part of each students’ tuition goes towards funding the students’ union as part of a mandatory fee, adding up to around $130 per student per year. It was revealed during legal proceedings between the RSU and Ryerson University in 2020 that the union collects more than $4 million in student fees annually.
According to TMSU records, audited financial documents have not been presented for approval in a general meeting since April 2020. As a result, students are currently unaware how much money the union has access to and what they are spending it on.
The lack of information surrounding the mandatory funds the TMSU receives from students’ tuition shows a breakdown in governance, says Garrett MacSweeney, a formally trained operational ethicist and instructor in the Law and Business program at TMU.
“The expectation is that the members will have the ability to inquire and ask questions and be presented with the information of their organization, of both the board and of management,” MacSweeney said.
“That’s a problem in large part, because it can lead to both questions of mismanagement of funds [and] questions regarding the actual allocation of funds.”
MacSweeney says students should have some recourse to get answers from the union.
“I would probably go and speak to the university as well to say, ‘This is a mandatory payment that you’re collecting and passing on to a party that, for some of us, have never seen an audit.’ You’re talking about five years, which is greater than the overall span of one’s [average] degree,” he told OTR.
Another major issue is when too much power is given to unelected non-student staff during the election process, which Patrick argued was the case with the SFUO in his dissertation.
“The power of unelected non-student actors must be limited so they do not unduly influence student democracy, and these actors’ potential to influence power-knowledge discourse within student governments needs to be understood as a way their power can manifest,” he wrote.
Don’t Look to the University
In a 2019 article, the former University of Ottawa provost and vice-president of academic affairs, David Graham said that “the university’s relationship with its student union has to strike a balance between the union’s autonomy and the university’s responsibility to ensure students’ money is used properly.”
TMU president Mohamed Lachemi told OTR in a phone interview at the end of March that the university has little authority over the TMSU due to it being a separate legal entity.
“We do not have the authority or oversight of many of their actions and activities. The controversies, alleged corruption and concerns raised by students about a lack of transparency by the TMSU is of ongoing concern to us,” Lachemi said.
“These issues have persisted over the past several years, despite leadership changes across multiple student executive teams. Our vice provost of students, Jen McMillan, has regular conversations taking place with the union regarding the obligation to operate within good governance.”
After the university terminated its 1986 operating agreement, it negotiated a new one that began on May 1, 2020. That agreement is set to expire at the end of the month. Negotiations are ongoing, Lachemi told OTR.
According to Lachemi, “measures to address improved governance, transparency, and accountability… is part of the agenda” for renegotiation.
What Can Be Done?
When asked what an ideal student union election cycle looks like, Patrick emphasized the need for widespread election promotion, ample time for nominations, grassroots mechanisms for students to remove people from their positions, and stronger student journalism.
The student union for the Vancouver campus of the University of British Columbia (UBC), the Alma Mater Society (AMS), is the largest in the country. According to Iman Janmohamed, the editor-in-chief of UBC’s primary campus newspaper, The Ubyssey, they have a dedicated team of fact-checkers and reporters assigned to election coverage.
“Students are apathetic to what’s happening on their campuses. Students just don’t have the time to go to every governance meeting. We do that for you so that you’re able to stay informed,” Janmohamed said. “We’re doing it because…we know the role that we have in the university ecosystem of informing others and to amplify marginalized voices and amplifying voices that wouldn’t be heard otherwise.”
This is not to say that the AMS hasn’t suffered from its own controversies over the years, including campaign suspensions and being found guilty of unfair labour practices in 2016.
According to Patrick, building grassroots engagement can take many years and can be challenging due to the limited resources students have. But he emphasized its importance on campuses around the country.
“Democracy is not just a constitution and a set of rules. It’s a learned practice. People need to actively uphold that,” he said in an interview.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly quoted the wrong words from one of our sources due to a connectivity error in the interview itself that made the words hard to discern. The quote has been corrected. OTR regrets this error.
Reporter, On The Record, Winter 2025.
