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.