CSU votes to conduct formal review of enuf Canada contract

The union also approved an appointment to the senate and a new signing officer

NewsSean Richard — Published September 21, 2026 0 minutes

CSU sustainability coordinator Zoe Erika-Okoye brought the motion to re-examine the termination of the union's 2025-2030 contract with enuf. 

Enuf is a corporation and social enterprise that helps organizations reduce waste through initiatives such as green brigades, waste audits and composting support.

The organization began as “Waste Not, Want Not” in 2016, after its Concordia University PhD student founders received a two-year, $35,000 grant. It later became enuf Canada and signed a two-year contract with the CSU in 2020, followed by another contract covering 2022 to 2025.

Keroles Riad is the CEO, CCO and co-owner of enuf Canada. He attended the RCM as a member of the public to ask the union to vote on a motion to honour obligations under the terminated contract, pay an invoice sent to the CSU in July and amend typos in the contract.

During the RCM, he presented to council and emphasized the union's long-standing relationship with enuf. 

“It's been a long partnership, and we've made a lot of progress,” Riad said. “When we started, there were only nine locations in all of Concordia that composted, and as we see now, they're pretty much everywhere, over 100 locations right now.” 

Riad explained that enuf had successfully reduced waste on campus. He presented graphs showing that annual composting at Concordia had doubled since the organization began its work and that campus waste had decreased by 15 per cent per person.

According to Riad, enuf received an email in August saying that the CSU executive committee had decided to terminate their contract. Riad acknowledged typos in the contract, even though they have been paid under the new contract for over a year. 

The first clause of the contract states that the CSU will pay enuf $28,500 per year for five years. However, the ninth lists the annual payment as $31,000, the amount included in enuf’s original proposal.

The second clause states that enuf will provide services to the Concordia community until August 2025, not August 2030.

The contract also states that any amendments must be approved by CSU council. However, it does not include the same requirement for cancelling the agreement.

Erika-Okoye said she found multiple errors in the contract she inherited, which was signed before she became an executive. She also met with Riad and spoke with faculty associations and other students about their experience. 

“In doing my research on enuf’s presence on campus, I found that there were a number of things that were lacking strictly based on the contract on both the CSU and enuf’s side,” Erika-Okoye said. “This involved two months of research; it wasn't just a decision that was made in the moment.”

The council then entered a closed session, which means only councillors and executives are permitted to be present, to further deliberate on the issue. 

Riad understood where the executives were coming from, but wanted to highlight the benefits enuf has brought to Concordia students in terms of opportunities and jobs.

“Our staff, 95 per cent of it, is Concordia students because of that contract, because we have to prioritize Concordia students in our hiring because we made commitments to hiring a certain number of students,” Riad said. 

Erika-Okoye’s motion passed during the closed session, which means the contract will be formally reviewed for feasibility and fulfilment of agreed-upon deliverables. 

Further council business

The union also approved finance coordinator Adey Singer as a signing officer, since general coordinator Ryan Assaker resigned from his position. 

The motion passed unanimously by roll call. 

The union also appointed councillor Gabriel Hendriks to Concordia’s senate, as one of the senators’ schedules could not align with the senate’s meetings. 

Hendriks was the only councillor who nominated himself. 

The union also approved a motion to authorize the internal affairs coordinator, Lina Elbakaye, to sign contractual agreements in place of the general coordinator, and to appoint Singer as chair of the Student Space, Accessible Education and Legal Contingency (SSAELC) Fund instead of the general coordinator. 

“Following the resignation of the general coordinator, [there] were two instances where we needed someone to sign something,” Singer said. “So it's just a temporary amendment to the policy to basically just let us keep doing our jobs.” 

The motion passed unanimously. 

The next motion passed moved the following RCM from Oct. 14, which falls during reading week, to Oct. 21. The motion also passed unanimously. 

The next motion passed was to strike the words “general coordinator” from bylaw 7.6.1 and replace it with “an executive.” That bylaw allows the general coordinator to exercise the decree with the written consent of three other executives in emergency situations that cannot be remedied by calling a special council meeting (SCM). 

After that, the following motion was passed regarding executive pay deductions for executives who submitted their reports past the 5 p.m. deadline on Sept. 16. 

The motion passed unanimously through roll call. 

The proposed motion to use $105,000 of the student endowment fund for a feasibility study to assess the viability and cost of the Bishop St. student building renovations was moved to the following RCM. 

Singer understood why councillors would need more time to approve a motion with that much money, but said that it would push the project back a month. 

“I understand if people don't feel comfortable with $100,000; it just means that this would get pushed back further,” Singer said. “The other thing is that we wanted to do that survey in tandem with the feasibility study.” 

Councillor Adam Semergian brought forward a motion for the CSU to recognize the Concordia cooperative bookstore's restart, an initiative that ran from 2003 to 2020.

Academic and advocacy coordinator Isabelle Ranger liked the initiative but questioned whether the group wanting to restart the bookstore would address the issues left behind. 

“Is there any concrete plan regarding the absent board of directors, the outstanding tests, the audit that needs to be done regarding the existing entity of the bookstore?” Ranger said. “It's not just a dormant fee levy; it's also dormant baggage.” 

Erika-Okoye also mentioned that the bookstore is not currently a fee levy group and would have to apply to be one like any other group. The motion did not pass through roll call. 

The last motion that was proposed by Coun. Semergian was on CUTV being able to broadcast RCMs and SCMs. 

Many councillors brought up the importance of being publicly seen, as they were voted in by Concordia students, but were worried about the logistics of filming members of the public during meetings. 

Councillors were also worried about the possible ramifications of the meetings staying permanently online. 

The motion was postponed until the next RCM. 

The RCM was adjourned shortly after 9:30 p.m.