Feds Votes to Leave CASA Membership

On January 13, the Federation of Students (Feds) had the first Council meeting of the term. One of the major discussions of the meeting involved Feds’ membership with the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA). At this time, Feds pays a membership fee of approximately $52,000 each year to be a member of this organization, whose primary role is to deal with federal issues and advocacy at the federal level on behalf of member Universities. Although post secondary education (PSE) falls under the purview of the Provincial Governments, the Federal Government still deals with: student loans and OSAP; Indian and northern affairs; citizenship and immigration; and international development, all of which affect students in PSE.

Over the past three years, Feds has been reviewing their membership with CASA to determine if the benefits of staying a member justified the membership fee. The Education Advisory Committee (EAC), the committee within Feds responsible for analysing the review, created a recommendation for Council that:

1. Feds remain Full Members of CASA
2. Feds not engage in a membership review of CASA for at least two full years
3. Feds invest increased resources towards institutional and municipal advocacy activities.

Although this was the committee’s recommendation, the committee members were not unanimous in the decision. As such, there was much discussion over the recommendation, resulting in sway of opinion for Council. As a result, a motion was brought forth to have Feds drop to Associate Membership status in CASA with the intent to leave entirely after one year. As background information, part of the CASA membership policy states that any member wishing to leave CASA must drop to Associate Membership for at least one year before leaving entirely. The membership fee for Associate Membership is half of the regular fee, approximating $21,000 for the year. The motion also recommended that Feds Executive use the extra resources made available by leaving CASA towards institutional and municipal advocacy. The motion passed with a majority vote.

One of the negative drawbacks from leaving CASA is Feds will have to advocate federally on its own. This is very difficult for an individual school, especially when there are already many organizations that advocate on behalf of Canadian Universities. However, Council believed that the issues at the federal level were not a high priority for students, and those more local topics such as exam schedules, study space, GRT bus routes, etc. were more important, and should thus have a larger share of resources. It is important to note that although Feds will no longer have a say in CASA’s advocacy direction, CASA still represents a large majority of Canadian Universities who have a similar outlook to Waterloo as to how the Federal government should run.

If you would like more information on this decision, please contact myself (awfisher@uwaterloo.ca) or your fellow Councillors, Chanakya Ramdev (chanakya.ramdev@uwaterloo.ca) or Breanne O’Grady (beogrady@uwaterloo.ca).