The trend towards greater rates of participation in CSU elections after the pandemic is interrupted, and the rise of disqualifications had the RCMP involved
Laura Morales (she/her) // Video Production Manager
CSU elections trends were reset after the pandemic, from having zero complaints in the three elections happening between 2020 and 2021, to having five disqualifications in Spring 2024. Now nine candidates and one non-candidate have been disqualified in the most recent election, including president Angad Brar, Vice-President Equity & Sustainability Dilkaran Singh and At-Large Representative Navjot Buttar, who were automatically removed from office as a result.
According to Capilano Students’ Union (CSU) Bylaw XIV Section 7(c), “Any person who has been disqualified by the Elections Administrator or the Arbitration Panel by reason of election campaign misconduct,” is prohibited from accepting office, and if the person is a director, their seat is vacated.
Angad Brar was not running for any position during this election, and being the CSU president, his disqualification and resulting removal from office came as a result of substantial evidence received by Kalpna Solanki, the elections administrator. According to Solanki’s Decision 2025–26 posted on March 13, “There have been ongoing complaints pertaining to election related misconduct,” including, “encouraging slating, working as a campaign volunteer without registration, coaching students to file complaints against candidates and involvement in verbal and physical altercations.”
Brar’s involvement seems to have started after Solanki’s Decision 2025-05 on March 6, which banned Dilkaran Singh, Rahul Singh Reandi, Manrajdeep Singh, Navjot Singh, Harmol Singh, Jaskaran Singh, Arshpreet Singh and Sanchit Kwatra from campaigning due to slating activities. Respondents have 48 hours to appeal decisions from the elections administrator, and in this case Sanchit’s appeal pointed out that the ruling didn’t include the evidence available and this hindered them from properly sharing their version of events. When a complaint is sent anonymously, this limits the ability of the elections administrator to investigate it, but since the arbitration panel upheld the ban without disclosing the evidence, it must have been convincing.
Members of the sanctioned group seemed to believe that candidate Harpreet Kaur or one of her campaign volunteers was responsible for sending the evidence to the elections administrator, which would explain the harassment complaint made against Kaur on March 9 with a photo of her talking to the claimant and Brar as a witness. She successfully appealed against it by including a recording of the conversation that happened during the encounter. Solanki responded, “the warning against you will be cancelled and all information related to it at the website will be removed. Many thanks for the audio clip as that may help us take action in another aspect.”
On March 10, the police were involved after Solanki posted Decision 2025-05 disqualifying Dilkaran, Rahul, Manrajdeep, Navjot, Harmol, Jaskaran, Arshpreet and Harjot Singh for slating activities. According to the report sent to the university’s Student Rights and Responsibilities Advisor, the elections administrator, the CSU executive director and the Courier by Kaur’s campaign volunteer, he was approached by Angad Brar, Gurjot Singh, Manmeet Singh and presidential candidate Manrajdeep Singh while talking on the phone. The report indicates that Brar snatched his phone and started verbally abusing him in Punjabi. One of the witnesses recorded the incident, and according to Solanki’s translation in the evidence attached to Decision 2025-26, they were trying to find out if Harpreet and her supporters were the ones who sent the evidence that got them disqualified. In addition to abusive language, Gurjot was reportedly trying to pull Kaur’s campaign volunteer into the washroom, and Manmeet intimidated another of Kaur’s supporters by saying,“I don’t care if you’re a boy or a girl.” The report included the exact time of the incident, 3:49 p.m., so that Solanki could corroborate the voice recording with the footage from the Library security camera.
At 7:00 p.m. that day, the campaign volunteer and the other supporter shared all the details of the incident with the RCMP. The officer indicated that an arrest was unlikely in this case, but he wouldn’t know for sure until he reviewed the footage from the security camera. He shared some advice for the students to stay safe until the election period is over, provided his contact information and then met with the university’s security staff.
This incident is the latest example of an ongoing problem in recent CSU elections—aggressive campaigning and candidate intimidation. The Courier reached out to former candidates who refused to participate in elections again. A former candidate for At-Large Representative shared, “They all want their people to be in power and then they divide the money; that’s why they want to make sure that there’s no opposition. I had too many no [caller] ID phone calls last time, and I didn’t want to go through that again.” Keshav Makker, former candidate for VP Equity & Sustainability, mentioned that, “People were bringing in outsiders, there were actual fights happening, and it felt like a lot of candidates didn’t even care about the position… It wasn’t about who was the best for the role anymore, just who had the biggest backing.”
Keshav also shared a very similar experience to Hargun Kaur, a former candidate for the same position, who had other candidates approaching them to assure them that they would lose, as a way of pressuring them to drop their candidacy. Manpreet Kaur, former VP External, explained how participating in the elections a second time allowed her to contrast it with the struggle of running as a new student. “Since I had been through the process before, I was able to navigate the situation professionally and report when applicable, but it is certainly intimidating for new students who rely on community support, not for votes, but other important things like navigating university, classes and friendships in a new city. This forces them to stay back from potential opportunities due to the threat of being alienated,” she said. All of these former candidates are from India, but their experience differs depending on the region they are from, as Keshav mentioned, “I’m Indian but I don’t speak Punjabi, so it felt like no matter how qualified I was, I wouldn’t get their support. It was just frustrating to see elections turn into something based on identity rather than merit.”
According to David Ennis, the CSU’s former Elections Administrator, the record number of 59 candidates during the 2024 General Elections indicated that, “the trend in recent years towards greater rates of participation in CSU elections is continuing,” considering that these numbers had been climbing from 22, 32 and 39 in the General Elections of Spring 2021, 2022 and 2023 respectively. On the other hand, voter turnout has been following a less consistent trend, going from approximately 12 per cent in 2022, 15 per cent in 2023, and 14 per cent in 2024. This year’s elections, however, showed a reduced number in both aspects/ 35 candidates and 8.6 per cent voter turnout.
The interruption on the trend of the rising number of candidates could be related to multiple instances of candidate intimidation in the previous elections, or the general decrease of student engagement with the elections and student governance. Either way, the new board has to consider when reviewing their bylaws and elections policy if they want to preserve their legitimacy as a representative student body.