CANADIAN FEDERATION OF STUDENTS
Letter from National
Chairperson
Dear Members,
For the past 25 years, students have been working together through the Canadian Federation of Students to advance their collective interests. As a member of the Canadain Federation of Students, you are united with over one-half million students across Canada.
As we celebrate our 25th anniversary, it is important to reflect on the successes we have achieved in recent years in our campaign for accessible education. Despite a temporary setback in Ontario this year, provincial governments in Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan are all maintaining tuition fee freezes this fall.
Public opinion polling shows that students' efforts to gain support for reduced tuition fees is working. A strong majority of Canadians are opposed to further tuition fee increases, despite aggressive public realtions campaigns by advocates of higher tuition fees. This public support should not be taken for granted, and work will be ongoing to build even greater public pressure to reduce tuition fees.
Federation campaigns and activities will be ongoing at your campus throughout the year. I urge each of you to get involved in whatever way you can. Together, we can make a difference.
In solidarity,
Amanda Aziz
National Chairperson
Canadian Federation of Students
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Overview of the Federation
The Canadian Federation of
Students was formed in 1981 to provide students with an
effective and united voice, provincially and nationally.
At the time, it was recognized that for students to be truly
effective in representing their collective interests to the
federal and provincial governments, it was vital to unite under
one banner.
Today, the Federation comprises
more than 450,000 students from 60 university and college
students' unions across the country.
Because universities and
colleges are funded primarily by the federal government and
administered exclusively by the provincial government,
government policies and priorities determine the quality and
accessibility of post-secondary education in Canada.
Tuition fee levels, student
financial assistance programs and funding for research are all
set directly or indirectly by both levels of government. Thus,
it is vital that students collectively organize at the
provincial and national levels to ensure that students'
rights and concerns are fully represented.
The CFS commits to:
-
provide a forum for students across Canada to discuss issues of concern
-
keep post-secondary education issues in the public eye
-
provide research on issues in post-secondary education
-
lobby the federal and provincial governments on education issues in general
-
build and maintain alliances with coalition partners and other groups
-
provide services to Canadian students (see below)
Each of the provincial component organizations, and the graduate student organizations of the CFS share these purposes. We meet together in these smaller groupings to ensure that the
concerns that are specific to Graduate Students, Ontario, or/and Ontario Graduate Students are comprehensively discussed and addressed in our campaigns. One thing the national office
does in addition to these is represent the voice of the Canadian student movement on an international level.
Decisions Made
Democratically
Each students' union, including
the GSU (local 19, and a founding member) has an equal say in
setting the policies, direction and priorities of the Federation
including how funds are spent. All major decisions are made at
provincial and national congresses four times annually at which
every member students' union is represented.
Links below will open a new
window:
Principles of the CFS
The CFS Approach: An Effective Strategy
Canadian Federation of Students National Website
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Activities of the Canadian
Federation of Students
Accurate research
Thorough, accurate and in-depth research is required to justify
any proposal put to government. The Canadian Federation of
Students employs full-time researchers across Canada who study
and prepare analyses of government policies and trends within
post-secondary education, and develop
alternatives to government policy. The Federation's work on
discrediting the ten-year prohibition on student loan
bankruptcies is recognized as having set the standard for
research on the issue.
Government lobbying
The primary purpose of the Federation is to represent students'
issues and concerns to government. Regular contact with elected
and non-elected officials and bureaucrats is how the
Federation's message is conveyed to government. Over the years,
the Federation has become a strong presence on Parliament Hill
and in provincial legislatures across Canada. Your
Federation representatives meet regularly with elected and
non-elected government officials, and frequently make
presentations to government committees and task forces. The
Federation meets regularly with federal MPs, other government
officials and representatives from all political
parties in Ottawa and at the provincial level.
Membership mobilization
Of course, regular meetings with government and all the research
in the world will have little impact unless the government
believes a message has widespread support. The Federation seeks
active and demonstrable support of its members through
activities ranging from petition drives to mass mobilizations.
These campaigns raise public awareness of and support for the
issues, which correspondingly affects the decisions and policies
of government.
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Campaigns
Tuition fees in Ontario are the second highest in all of Canada.
Ontario has the second lowest per capita funding for higher
education in the country. Average student debt exceeds $25,000.
Students from the highest quarter income bracket are 50% more
likely than students from middle-income brackets to attend
university. Less than half of young people from low-income
backgrounds have access to higher education.
The Federation is campaigning:
for the progressive reduction of tuition and ancillary fees at
public post-secondary institutions across the country with the
ultimate goal of eliminating the financial barriers to education
an end to the deregulation of tuition fees
the reduction of reduce student debt upon graduation
to ensure that public post-secondary education is fully funded
the restoration of Federal government funding for pse
to address the exclusion of marginalized groups from
post-secondary education caused by rising tuition fees
Winter 2004 Student Day of Action
In February 2004, Federation member locals across the country
participated in a nationally
coordinated
and provincially focused Student Day of Action against student
debt and rising tuition fees. In Ontario, students successfully
lobbied for a fully-funded tuition fee freeze.
Keep the Public in Post-Secondary Education
Deep cuts to government funding have resulted in the increasing
privatisation of public colleges and universities. This has
compromised the integrity of teaching and research on many
campuses and undermines the social value of post-secondary
education.
The Federation is campaigning to:
halt the establishment or expansion of private degree-granting
institutions; and
end the designation of private, for-profit post-secondary
institutions as eligible to receive funds through provincial
student loans programmes, the Canada Student Loan Program, and
other sources; and
oppose the linking of public funding to key performance
indicators.
Don't Trade Away Our Rights
The Canadian Government is participating in the development of
international trade agreements that seek to put public education
on the table for trade negotiations. If education is treated as
a commodity that can be bought and sold on the international
market, Canada could lose the right to publicly fund our
education and provide equal access to colleges and universities.
The Federation is actively campaigning to halt the threat posed
to post-secondary education by international free trade
agreements.
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National Graduate Caucus (NGC)
The National Graduate Caucus (NGC) is an entity within the
Canadian Federation of Students whose primary objective is to
promote the interests of graduate students nationally by
advocating for funding for university research, support for
graduate students, and the protection of intellectual property
rights and academic freedom. The Caucus is composed of the over
60,000 graduate student members of the Federation.
This year, the NGC is campaigning protect academic integrity and
the public interest in university research. For more
information, visit
www.cfs-fcee.ca/ngc
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Services: Strength in numbers
No individual students' union,
no matter how big or active, has the resources or the political
clout on their own to effectively influence the post-secondary
education policies of the provincial and federal governments. At
best, an individual students' union could have an impact on a
few electoral ridings. Governments ignore groups that pose no
political threat to them. It's also much more cost effective for
a large number of students' unions to pool their resources and
to work in partnership than for each to undertake this work on
its own.
Through the Federation,
students' unions collectively pool their resources to provide
student owned and operated services such as the
StudentSaver
discount card, the National Student Health Network,
Travel CUTS,
homes4students.ca, and the Student Work Abroad Program.
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