CASA at work for students

CASA elects Governance Officers for 2009-2010

Ottawa, ON – During its recent annual Policy and Strategy conference, held in Calgary, Alberta, the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA) elected its governance officers for 2009-2010.

 

Tina Robichaud was elected as Chairperson. Joining her is Justin Williams as Secretary and Allan Hall as Treasurer. Robichaud is president of the “Fédération des étudiantes et étudiants du centre universitaire de Moncton,” Williams is the VP Education of the Federation of Students at the University of Waterloo, and Hall is the VP Administration for the University of Lethbridge Students’ Union.

The governance officers act on behalf of the entire membership to ensure the accountability and effectiveness of the organization. As leaders among leaders, these three students will help realize the policy and advocacy priorities set out by the membership.

“We have a big year ahead of us, but also a driven membership and incredible potential to work with the government, civil servants and stakeholders to accomplish our objectives,” said Robichaud. “I have no doubt we can achieve both our short term and long term goals, and ensure a common future and a better Canada.”

juuuuust kidding.

“Robichaud has been a dedicated leader within CASA and student politics for a number of years now,” said Arati Sharma, National Director of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations. “I am confident that the new executive team will strengthen CASA’s mandate for a more accessible, affordable, high quality post-secondary education system in Canada.”

CASA would also like to thank the former governance officers, Kyle Steele, Kim Hartlin and Alastair MacKinnon, for their dedication to the betterment of students’ lives and of the post-secondary education sector as a whole.

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The Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA) is a non-partisan, not-for-profit national student organization composed of 24 student associations, representing over 300,000 students from coast to coast.

For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact:
Jillian Flake
Public Relations and Communications Officer
Canadian Alliance of Student Associations
Tel.:   613-236-3457   ext. 224 (c)   613-868-6605  ,
Email: casacomm@casa.ca

Sweet Rhymes and Hard Times

Our goals this week,

As the Economy looks bleak:

Learn more about RAP and the CSGP,

And get big Commitments from every MP!

Gather together and collect Information,

To Spread PSE all over the Nation!

The above is courtesy of the great team at the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations. I am hunkered down in Ottawa at the Lord Elgin Hotel, with VP Admin Brodie Pattenden, and President Elect Jeremy Girard. We are in the process of briefing new and old members about how to effectively advocate PSE issues to the federal government.

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, CASA is a national lobby organization that focuses on issues related to post secondary education in Canada. Over the next week (3.5 days technically) over 70 student leaders will be meeting with ~150 MPs, Senators, and Policy staff of the government.

This event, called Lobby Con (Con is for conference, not some clever reference to government), and has become quite the event on the Hill. The priorities that CASA has can change from year to year, but it always focuses on improving Canada’s university system through non-partisan, rational, and intelligent policy recommendations.

This year, in the face of the “looming economic crisis” (I really hate that term actually. Sorry for perpetuating it), CASA has had a tough job. It is not easy to ask for funding when the government is staring down the wrong end of defecit budget for the first time in a decade. But CASA does not give up that easily. We are nothing if not persistent!

This year, the membership has decided to focus on the following priorities, in no particular order:

- Expand the Canada Student Grant Program

- Enhance the Repayment Assistance Plan

- Take a Balanced Approach to Copyright Law

- Reduce the Cost of Academic Materials

- Create Tri-Council Funding Autonomy

- Improve Tri-Council Salary Guideline

As the week goes on, I will post more on each of the above points.

Until the future,

Adam Vossepoel

President

PM Harper to address the country tonight.

 

Todays Globe and Mail (as well as every other Canadian news source):

Mr. Harper will speak to Canadians at 7 p.m. ET Wednesday in an effort to justify his decision to stay in power rather than yield the prime minister’s office to Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion and his alliance with the NDP and separatist Bloc Québécois.

The Prime Minister’s Office has recommended to broadcasters that airtime be given to only one representative of the proposed coalition. However the NDP has written to the President of CTV News, Bob Hurst, requesting that all three party leaders be allowed to speak tonight.

This is having the country a buzzing. Twitter, Blog’s and website have sprung up in a matter of days devoted to the changes being made in Ottawa and trying to educate Canadian’s on our parliamentary process. Mainstream media has also made the effort to be as informative as possible but with headlines such as “No! No! No!” and “We need stability, not a political circus” the Canadian public is seeing the cracks in our mainstream media.

Lowest voter turnout in the history of Canada…

Yesterday, the Canadian election saw the lowest voter turnout in Canada’s history.

59% of Canadians went to the polls yesterday to cast their ballot for who they believed was best fit to lead our country.

Newfoundland/Labrador, NWT, Nunavut and Alberta led the country with the four lowest turnouts from all provinces, according to the CBC as of 11:44 this morning.

As I moan and sit here incredibly disappointed, I ponder on the factors that come into play here.

Yesterday while running after students and confronting them on their apathy towards our democratic system, the most common answer I heard was that they felt no one represented them and that it didn’t matter which party got elected. It wasn’t because of inconvenience or because they just didn’t care, it was the lack of engagement towards all Canadians. In fact, many students I spoke to said they were simply going to spoil their ballot.

I personally cannot be content with the status quo of this country, and I feel that this voter turn out is a call to all politicians in all parties and to Elections Canada to make politics relevant. Parties, get it together. All of you are disappointing Canadians and the silence in our democratic process is deafening.

Alberta has the fourth highest tutition in the country or: holy crow!

Tuition in Alberta continues to rise
Average Alberta university student to pay $239 more

Edmonton, AB – Statistics Canada reported today that university tuition continues to rise in Canada, with Alberta coming in near the top of the pack. Nationally tuition rose 3.6% this year to $4,724 but Alberta experienced a 4.7% increase to $5,361.

“It is disappointing to see tuition go up in Alberta while other provinces are working on freezing or even lowering tuition,” said Beverly Eastham, University of Alberta Students’ Union VP External and chair of the Council of Alberta University Students (CAUS).

Average undergraduate tuition fees for full-time students 2007/08 2008/09 change
Nova Scotia $6,110 $5,932 -2.9
Ontario $5,388 $5,643 4.7%
New Brunswick $5,590 $5,590 0.0%
Alberta $5,122 $5,361 4.7%
British Columbia $4,922 $5,040 2.4%
Saskatchewan $5,015 $5,015 0.0%
Canada avg. $4,558 $4,724 3.6%
Prince Edward Island $4,440 $4,530 2.0%
Manitoba $3,271 $3,276 0.2%
Newfoundland $2,632 $2,632 0.0%
Quebec $2,056 $2,167 5.4%

Students recently proposed that in the next provincial budget the Government of Alberta fully fund a rollback on tuition for 2009/10. “Tuition is too high in Alberta, and now is the time to take action and lower it,” said Eastham.

The Statistics Canada report can be found through this link.

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The Council of Alberta University Students (CAUS) represents the interests of students at the University of Alberta, the University of Calgary and the University of Lethbridge.

For more information contact:
Beverly Eastham
CAUS Chair
tel: 780-492-4236
cell: 780-237-1707

Duncan Wojtaszek
CAUS Executive Director
tel: 780-437-4531
cell: 780-297-4531

Election expected for October 14th.

According to CanWest news services as of 2:01 this morning (at least thats the time the article was time stamped for…) “Prime Minister Stephen Harper will visit Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean early Sunday morning and ask her to dissolve the 39th Parliament, Canwest News Service has learned. Canadians will vote Oct. 14, after the shortest campaign permitted by law.”

This federal election looks to be a rather interesting one. Coming so close to the U.S. election and with so much controversy over the last session and so much press on both major parties over the summer, who knows how Canadians will react and what our voter turn out will be?

To learn more check out The Telegraph article or this one from CTV.

Jenn Prosser, VP Academic

Lethbridge Takes Silver in Rugby!

From July 16th – 19th, 2008 in the city of Córdoba, Spain 5 female University of Lethbridge students along with fellow rugby players from across Canada competed in the 3rd University World Rugby Championship. Playing against the likes France, Spain, Great Britain, and Italy, our girl played hard and placed second, earning a silver medal.

Team Canada - Silver Medallist, Spain 2008

Back L-R: Matt Parrish (coach), Tiffany Dautremont, Michelle Joslin, Annika Errikson, Ashley MacDonald, Ghislaine Landry, Dana Stoughton, Andrea Letal, Brittany Orr, Sue Chalk (coach), Carrie Smith (therapist).

Front L-R: Shannon Court, Cass Wendzich, Amanda Matchet, Jessie Wall.

The ULSU would like to extend congratulations to all our Canadian players, but in particular; Ashley MacDonald, Shannon Court, Tiffany Dautremont, Brittany Orr, and Andrea Letal who are all from the University of Lethbridge.

Well done girls and here’s to the University of Lethbridge continuing to be excellent in Women’s Rugby! A national championship and now a silver medal in a world competition.

Cheers,

Eric
VP Internal

Meal Exchange – A Great Cause

Here is my report regarding the trip I made into the centre of the Universe. Enjoy;

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I was in Toronto with 34 other delegates from across Canada to talk about the growing problem of food and how it affects the average university student. Esurio was hosted by a charitable organization known as Meal Exchange, which started out as a student led initiative that sought to ease the burden of hunger across Canada. Now in the full swing of their operations, Meal Exchange has chapters from coast to coast that run programs to help local charities and food banks combat the problem of hunger.

My role in this conference was slightly different that the average delegate; I was attending under the flag of a “food bank coordinator” representing the service that we offer here at the University of Lethbridge.

The conference helped me learn a lot about the situation that is facing a lot of people in Canada with regards to hunger, however, the problem of hunger on a campus is a different issue as I have learned. Our situation as students with regards to hunger is rarely a factor of the social fabric we come from. Instead student hunger seems to be a product of circumstance; the fact that large sums of money are due at certain points in time (tuition, books, rent, etc.) and then compound by restricted time due to classes and thus limited earning potential.

Esurio taught me about the need to report on the facts of our campus and the situations that we face as students. Because of this, I will be planning a student hunger survey that will be given to the general public to gauge hunger on our campus and what we as the ULSU can do to combat it. I have also made some minor adjustments to help provide a stronger service from our Food Bank that I hope our community members will notice in the near future.

My only regret with this conference is that by the end of the three days I felt as though I had attended the same seminars over and over again; a greater range of diversity of subject for the food bank coordinators would have helped a lot. Also, at times the sessions I attended did not apply to my position since they were targeting Meal Exchange chapter coordinators.

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Cheers,

Eric
VP Internal

Oh, Canada! These are my heritage moments

That’s right, it is Canada’s 141st birthday today and for many people including myself, it is somewhat a day of reverence and I have several traditions which I have upheld for many a year. One of them is seeking out Canada fireworks because nothing says pride like huge non threatening safety first explosions of light in the sky. That statement seems a little passive aggressive but I promise it isn’t.

One of these traditions, and this should surprise no one, is to make a top ten list of things I love about Canada. So in grand tradition, here is “The Jenn Prosser loves Canada so much she often thinks about how awesome it is”. Besides this wicked list, which you really should check out, other things I like to do is check out wicked trivia about Canada, like THIS Canada Day quiz, or this little ditty from CBC or this:

But beyond all that I really really like watching Canadian Heritage moments until I am reciting lines like a washed up actor from Degrassi Junior High (which in itself is part of our heritage).

After I have done this I throw on my favourite version of Oh, Canada (and here’s the words, just in case…) and settle in for a great night of fireworks with a feeling of pride to call this country home.

Happy Canada Day.

Jenn Prosser, VP Academic