Lobby Groups

The UWSA and its students are represented by two lobby groups. Provincially by OUSA, the Ontario Undergraduate Students Alliance, and federally by CFS, the Canadian Federation of Students.

Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance

OUSA is a coalition of seven elected student organizations from across Ontario. They have come together to protect the interests of Ontario’s full-time and part-time undergraduate students by providing research and ideas to governments on how to improve quality and accessibility of post-secondary education in Ontario. These elected student representatives work together to set OUSA’s policies and direction. Currently, OUSA and its member schools represent over 140,000 Ontario university students.

The seven member student councils of OUSA are:

Brock University Students’ Union
* McMaster Students Union
* Alma Mater Society at Queen’s University
* University Students’ Council at UWO
* University of Windsor Students’ Alliance
* Waterloo Federation of Students
* Wilfrid Laurier University Students’ Union

University of Windsor undergraduate students pay their OUSA fee of $2.14 once per year. It is included as part of your Student Union fee.

OUSA has a long record of success in lobbying for changes that benefit students at Ontario’s universities. Some notable accomplishments include:

successfully lobbied for a two-year tuition freeze and associated funding for 2004/05 and 2005/06;
* successfully lobbied for student representation on the review of higher education in Ontario (Leslie Church, former Executive Director of OUSA, sat on the Postsecondary Review Advisory Panel);
* successfully lobbied for $20.9 million in changes to student financial aid in the 2004 provincial budget, including:
o reducing the parental contribution;
o updating the definition of “independent” student from five to four years;
o increasing debt forgiveness for loans near-default; and
o extending OSAP to accepted refugees.
* Fifteen of the 28 recommendations from the final report of the Postsecondary Review reflect OUSA‘s priorities as outlined in our submission;
* successfully lobbied for a tuition cap in 2000 (at two per cent per year for inflation);
* established a coalition of university stakeholders, with the aim of raising public awareness of post-secondary issues;
* lobbied to create the Ontario Advisory Committee on Student Financial Aid (OACSFA);
* created the framework for legislation that limited ancillary fee increases and rested decision making in the hands of students;
* persuaded the government to increase the allowable earnings threshold for students to $1,100;
* worked with the Alma Mater Society at Queen’s University to defeat deregulation at that institution; and ensured student involvement in the development of the Quality Assurance Fund.

If you are interested in finding out more information about OUSA please visit its website at http://www.ousa.on.ca or contact your Vice-President: University Affairs at at 519–253-3000 ext. 4501 or vpuauwsa@uwindsor.ca

Successes for Students

OUSA has a long record of success in advocating for change in Ontario’s post-secondary policies with its partners. Some notable accomplishments include:

established a coalition of university stakeholders, with the aim of raising public awareness of post-secondary issues;
lobbied to create the Ontario Advisory Committee on Student Financial Aid;
worked with the Queen’s University Alma Mater Society to defeat undergraduate tuition deregulation at that institution;
successfully lobbied for a two-year tuition freeze and associated funding to ensure quality;
successfully lobbied to update the definition of “independent” student from five to four years.
successfully lobbied for changes in student financial aid and University quality in the 2005 budget including:
increasing post-secondary funding by 2009–2010 (6.2 Billion investment by 2009);
introducing a system of first and second year grants for low-income students, providing up to $9,000 over two years;
increasing the financial aid package to better reflect the cost of attending university while increasing *current back-end grants through the Ontario Student Opportunity Grant (OSOG) to ensure that student debt does not increase;
improving interest relief for graduates in the greatest need;
Continue the tuition freeze for 2005–06 and begin work immediately with students, colleges and universities on a new tuition framework to be in place by September 2006.

Educated Solutions: Our Research & Policy

One of OUSA‘s major strengths is its ability to provide educated solutions to government in the form of thoughtful and thorough research papers and government submissions.
OUSA Policies and Backgrounders

Canadian Federation of Students

The Canadian Federation of Students was formed in 1981 to provide students with an effective and united voice, provincially and nationally. Students recognized that 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 is composed of 74 university and college students’ associations with a combined membership of more than 475,000 students.

Founding Principles

The Federation was founded with the following aims and objectives:

To organize students on a democratic, cooperative basis in advancing our own interests and in advancing the interests of our community;
To provide a common framework within which students can communicate, exchange information, and share experience, skills and ideas;
To ensure the effective use and distribution of the resources of the student movement, while maintaining a balanced growth and development of student organizations that respond to students’ needs and desires;
To bring students together to discuss and to achieve necessary educational, administrative or legislative change wherever decision-making affects students;
To facilitate cooperation among students in organizing services that supplement our academic experience, provide for our human needs and which develop a sense of community with our peers and other members of society;
To articulate the real desire of students to fulfill the duties, and be accorded the rights of citizens in our society and in the international community;
To achieve our ultimate goal – a system of post-secondary education that is accessible to all, which is of high quality, which is nationally planned, which recognizes the legitimacy of student representation and the validity of student rights, and whose roles in society is clearly recognized and appreciated.

Road to Success

For a student organization to be successful at influencing government policy it must produce quality research, develop relationships with government, and demonstrate that there is public support for its issues.

Research: Thorough, accurate and in-depth research is required to support any proposal presented to government. The Canadian Federation of Students employs four 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.

Lobbying: The Federation’s primary purpose is to represent students’ issues and concerns to government. Regular contact with elected and nonelected officials and bureaucrats is how the Canadian Federation of Students’ message is conveyed.

In Canada, most post-secondary education financing is provided by the federal government but is administered exclusively at the provincial level. Government policies and priorities determine the quality and accessibility of post-secondary education in Canada. Thus, the Federation employs a government relations strategy that targets both the federal and provincial representatives.

Action: Of course, regular meetings with government and the very best research will have little impact unless the government believes a message has widespread support. The Federation demonstrates this support through the active participation of its members in activities ranging from petition drives to mass mobilizations. These campaigns raise public awareness of the issues, and correspondingly affect the decisions and policies of government. Strength in Numbers.

No individual students’ association, no matter how big or how active, has the resources or the political clout to effectively influence the post-secondary education policies of the provincial and federal governments on its own. At best, as individual students’ association could have an impact on only a few federal electoral ridings. Governments ignore groups that pose no political threat to them. It is also much more cost effective for a large number of students’ associations to pool their resources and work in partnership than for each to undertake this work on its own.

The Federation also enables students’ associations to collectively pool their resources to provide student owned and operated services such as Travel CUTS, the International Student Identity Card (ISIC), the Studentsaver Card, Homes4students.ca, the Student Work Abroad Program (SWAP), and the National Student Health Network, Democratic Decision-making.

Each member students’ association 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 at which every member students’ association is represented.

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