CASA tries to figure out what is bad about the student experience, what the federal government can do to improve it, and try to convince the federal government to take action.
Fees paid by CASA member associations (usually about $3-$4 per student) support the work we do, including
- Conducting research on student problems
- Understanding federal government programs and how they can be improved
- Communicating to the public to build supports for solutions to student problems
- Talk to decisionmakers in the federal government to get them to implement solutions
CASA is student-driven. Our priorities are chosen by the student leaders elected by our member associations.
Advocacy at CASA is done by both student leaders and staff. CASA maintains a small staff in Ottawa to do its research, communications, and some of it's talking to government. It is led by CASA's Executive Director, who is hired by the entire membership.
Students are also highly involved in advocacy. Each CASA member association sends two student leaders to represent their interests at CASA's meetings. One of their biggest decisions is to elect form among their peers the 7 voting members of CASA's Board of Directors.
The Board of Directors keep their normal student association roles, but also add CASA responsibilities like leading our policy development, developing public awareness and action campaigns, or overseeing CASA's staff.
Every year, CASA also hosts its biggest event: advocacy week. During advocacy week, student leaders converge on Ottawa to meet with 50-100 MPs, Senators, civil servants and other decision makers to promote our policy recommendations for the year.
We also partner closely with the Québec Student Union, who are our partners in advocacy for a post-secondary system where Québec programs often look different than those in the rest of Cadnada.
Finally, everyday students are part of CASA's advocacy too. During CASA's campaigns, which happen once or more a year, CASA gives students the resources to take their own action, like giving them tools to contact their MPs about issues currently facing the government. CASA deploys these campaigns strategically to try to change government's actions.
CASA advocates on post-secondary issues related to making post-secondary more accessible, more affordable, and higher quality. Sometimes we pitch government on big investments, like during our annual advocacy week documents. Other times we do things with smaller dollar values but big impacts, like convincing the government that you can't sell your car to afford tuition if you need it to get to school or making it easier for students with long-term disabilities not have to prove their disabilities are permanent to receive assistance.
We have a blog post that covers some of our recent accomplishments, but for 30 years we've been busy building Canada's needs-based financial aid system, bringing mental health conversations out of stigma into the mainstream, and pushing for better jobs in the summer and throughout the year.
You can check our membership here.
If your association isn't part of CASA and you think it should be, CASA is easy to join. You can contact us through our contact form if you want to learn more, or can reach out directly to your university of college's student association's president, the Chair of their Board, or your student representative on your student association's board or council, and link them to our recruitment page.
If your student association wants to see if CASA would be a good match, they can join as observers, for free, with no associated fees for 2 years while they consider membership.
CASA is made to enable student advocacy. The easiest way to get involved with CASA is to follow and engage with us on social media.
If you want to be even more involved, and you're at a member school, consider running for an executive position involved with CASA. You can ask your current association executive for more information.
If you're not part of a CASA member school, you can get involved by talking to your friends and your student association about joining!
Our website is a great place to learn. The "Our Work" page has a collection of a lot of the stuff we've been doing.
If you have questions our website can't answer, consider using our "contact us" form.