Research grants, Canadian student loans, student visas. These are just a few of the ways the federal government is involved in post-secondary education. Unlike the provincial government, federal government tends not to directly fund the day-to-day operations of a university or regulate tuition, however, they still have direct impacts on universities. For that reason, student associations like the Waterloo Undergraduate Student Association (WUSA), have been working to influence the federal government. The latest path that WUSA has chosen for this is to rejoin the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA). On May 1, 2025, WUSA became an official member of the alliance after spending one year as an observer, meaning the school does not pay a fee or has a vote. 

CASA has a home office in Ottawa with six full-time staff that conduct its the day- to-day business. Student leaders gather together in person several times a year to establish advocacy priorities, discuss the operations of the organization, and lobby the federal government.

This is not WUSA’s first time being a member of CASA, as it was a founding member when the alliance was created in 1995. WUSA eventually left the alliance in 2017, feeling that CASA was struggling to balance the interests of its large coalition of big universities, small universities, graduate students, and colleges. The departure from CASA was part of a broader trend among larger universities across Canada that left to form their own advocacy group they felt would better represent the unique asks of their bigger and research-centric campuses. This included universities like the University of British Columbia and Western University.

Arya Razmjoo, former WUSA vice-president and current director, discussed his understanding of the reasons why the decision was made for WUSA to leave CASA. He explained how UW student leadership at the time felt that when it came to lobbying students, universities and colleges had very different beliefs on the topic. “So, by allowing [UW] to compromise with colleges on advocacy, we dilute what we can advocate for,” Razmjoo stated. The WUSA director went on to say that due to the fact that CASA equates one school to one vote, regardless of size in student population, was another factor that lead WUSA to separate from CASA. “There was a belief that schools like Waterloo, which are bigger by student populations, should have a bigger vote share when it comes to deciding how we lobby,” Razmjoo said.  

CASA continues to be made up of the same diverse collection of student groups, although a lot of the large associations that left CASA have not returned. It is currently made up of 29 member associations representing over 400,000 students.

U Crew, the group that was created by the student associations of the bigger universities that left CASA, turned out to also have its challenges. “When Katie was the Vice President [of WUSA in 2023-2024] at the time, she found out a couple of fundamental challenges in U Crew, which I also was dealing with at the time. One being an organization that had no fee structure, no full time staff, and you could generally fail to be able to initiate effective advocacy due to lack of staff and lobbyists which we require to do this type of work,” Razmjoo said.

When looking at rejoining CASA, Razmjoo led the effort, including getting a motion from the board and funding for the fee at a WUSA general meeting. According to him, CASA had a lot of advocacy victories to their name compared to other options. His main concern was whether the priorities advocated by the lobbying organization were being reflected in government decisions and budget allocations. Razmjoo felt that the correlation between the two was strongest with CASA.

And as for the issues previous WUSA vice-presidents and boards had seen in CASA? Razmjoo had a different view of them.

“My belief, and I think the belief our board exercised when we decided to join CASA, is that challenges that students face are not exclusive to the size of the university or if it’s a university or a college, they still all have issues of housing, mental health, high tuition, [and] student loan challenges. So we took [the] position [that] it doesn’t matter if you’re a college student or you’re a big university student or small university student, you’re still a student and your challenges are much more in line with one another than different. So let’s do a big tent umbrella, get more funding because more schools and organizations are a part of it, so we can do more effective lobbying and actually be able to pass things and achieve things,” Razmjoo said.

In an interview Ramzjoo mentioned that some of the other larger schools that had left CASA were also observers at the same time that WUSA was and chose not to rejoin, not because they felt it was ineffective, but because the student associations were facing financial challenges.

While CASA does not have any members in Quebec, they do have a partnership with the Quebec Student Union (QSU). This partnership allows the QSU to join CASA’s federal advocacy and provides CASA an opportunity to also engage with the Bloc Québecois MP’s, who routinely only engage with groups that have Quebec-specific interests.

“When we are doing our federal advocacy, they [the QSU] contribute to the advocacy. So usually a lot of their asks is around the research with grad students, because a lot of the members they represent are grad students. So, we co-brand our advocacy week. And the reason we also do that too is so we are able to then meet with the Bloc as a party, who otherwise wouldn’t meet with an organization that has Canadian in front of it. So, I think we are able to truly say we are multi partisan when we are able to meet with an untapped party as well, but also, like they don’t have a voting right on us, they can sit on committees, but we do like [to] collaborate,” said Wasiimah Joomun, executive director of CASA.

CASA’s operations are funded by membership fees that are based on the number of students that a member organization represents. There is a minimum and a maximum, with WUSA easily hitting the maximum cap of $67,647.47 for 2025. WUSA is also part of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA), a provincial lobby group, and their annual membership fee sits at just under double the CASA fee at $118,540.52.

Ramzjoo noted that CASA has been able to see tangible results to their lobby efforts in recent years. He highlighted that in 2024, CASA acquired $1.5 billion for Canadian student grants and loans, $242 million for Indigenous student aid, and $500 million in youth mental health funding. Other recent victories include successfully lobbying for the elimination of interest on federal student loans in 2022, and securing $825 million in 2024 to increase the annual value of graduate scholarships.

The current WUSA vice-president, Remington Zhi, is currently serving on the National Advocacy Committee of CASA. This committee is responsible for the advocacy campaigns of the organization, including advocacy engagement on CASA member campuses.

Zhi outlined this year’s priorities that were set over the summer, including the Student Work Placement Program (SWPP), which is a federally funded initiative aiming to provide post-secondary students with paid work experience related to their field. This includes mandating a minimum portion of worksite hours on federally funded projects to be from apprentices, grants, and loans, going towards student residences and nonprofit housing, tri-council agency graduate student funding, Canada student financial aid program levels, and student co-op permit requirements.

According to Zhi, the priorities are centered on affordability. “Over and over in the conversations at foundations and poly strat conferences, we hear affordability be the biggest issue,” Zhi said.

CASA also provides an opportunity for student leaders from across the country to interact with each other and share their ideas. Zhi believes that CASA complements the work of the WUSA advocacy department by adding capacity and expertise to the internal work being done by WUSA.

“CASA really helps us get meetings with more MP’s who might not meet with WUSA otherwise, because we’re not a part of their constituency. They also have more staff and more perspectives which can help develop policy and advocacy priorities that we wouldn’t otherwise come up with. I think one thing CASA is really strong at is their policy development. Their federal policy committee does great work coming up with a [budgeted] and well researched policy that you know WUSA doesn’t currently have the capacity to produce on our own,” Zhi said.

CASA is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year and Joomun is hopeful that the organization’s influence can build on its past successes to become even more influential.

“The goal of CASA is to position themselves as a thought leader that any time post-secondary education comes up they’re like, oh, we need to invite the student voice around the table. So, we’ve kind of increased our visibility in Ottawa. We’ve been working a little bit more on … coalition building. We have a coalition for research where we work with the U15 [a group of Canadian research universities] as well, in terms of pushing for our advocacy. Very often, we are the only people around the table that [represent] student voices. So I think in the future, I see CASA taking a little bit more, hopefully, of a leadership role into… thought leadership,” Joomun said.