Last week, UNB Student Union President Richard Du attended the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations’ Policy and Planning Conference at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver where he represented UNB students.
The Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA) is a union of over 22 student governments across Canada. With this joint voice on the national level, CASA is able to speak and advocate on behalf of Canadian students to the federal government. Recent CASA successes in 2018 include $10 million invested to expand financial support to Métis students and $5.5 million invested to address gender-based violence on post-secondary campuses.
At the CASA Policy and Planning Conference President Du discussed with other student governments and helped contribute to a yearly policy priorities list for CASA. Keeping UNB students’ best interest at heart, he also voted on important issues that CASA was going to advocate to the Canadian government in the upcoming year.
Atlantic student government representatives.
Richard with the President of the UNB SRC (Saint John) Samuel Palmer.
Student government representatives gathered in a meeting to vote on policy priorities to bring to Parliament.
There are four CASA conferences through the year. This conference follows the CASA Foundations Conference that VP Advocacy Simal Qureshi attended in May, where student governments were briefed on how to best communicate with the Canadian government and Members of Parliament (MP’s). The next conference will take place in October at Parliament Hill in Ottawa, where Richard and Simal, along with other student leaders will meet with MP’s to fight for the issues that are on hand such as sexual violence on campus, increased experiential learning opportunities and international student support.
If you would like more information on CASA and/or their Policy and Planning Conference, please reach out to president@unbsu.ca.