All Posts Tagged With: "lobbying"
Simon Fraser donated to Liberals
Public funds should not go to political parties: Minister
A Simon Fraser University official spent $2,045 of university money to attend seven B.C. Liberal Party fundraisers, the Vancouver Sun has revealed. The official in question, director of government relations Wilf Hurd, is a former Liberal Member of the Legislative Assembly himself.
Don MacLachlan, an SFU spokesperson, told the Vancouver Sun that the university had no policy on such expenses until now, but he promised that such donations will not be allowed in the future.
Liberal Minister of Advanced Education Naomi Yamamoto said that such donations are wrong. “I don’t think taxpayer dollars or public funds should be going to political parties,” she said.
It’s not just B.C. where university officials have used public money to attend political events. The University of Lethbridge, Athabasca University, Portage College and Grande Prairie Regional College have all illegally donated to the Alberta Progressive Conservatives, CBC News reports.
Sunday SFU Post #2: SFU-CFS dispute keeps going and going and…
going. In my experiences, debates on campus concerning the two national student lobby groups, CASA & CFS, are extremely interesting to campus journalists and politicians, and duller than a Canadian sitcom to everyone else (I’m looking at you, Little Mosque). That being said, I’m estimating campus journalists and politicians make up a disproportionate portion of [...]
going.
In my experiences, debates on campus concerning the two national student lobby groups, CASA & CFS, are extremely interesting to campus journalists and politicians, and duller than a Canadian sitcom to everyone else (I’m looking at you, Little Mosque). That being said, I’m estimating campus journalists and politicians make up a disproportionate portion of my audience, so I’ll bite: A B.C. Supreme Court judge has declined to make a summary judgement of the legal battle between Simon Fraser and the CFS, and has asked them, like two squabbling schoolkids, to settle and make nice out of court.
It’s possible that the two sides will settle. Of course, given the fact that this has already been going for a year with neither side willing to budge, it’s even more possible that this will drag on in legal limbo for some time.
In other news, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
USask student lobbying secures $15 million
Housing crisis + student lobbying = direct government action. Well done.
Lobbying is a funny thing, especially for student unions. While we know student unions lobby government, we can never tell if their lobbying is succeeding or if government actions on the post-secondary file would occur regardless of that lobbying.
There are rarely instances where it is absolutely clear that student union lobbying is the reason an issue is addressed by government.
The announcement of $15 million in new funding for student housing at the University of Saskatchewan is one of these cases.
Two years ago, housing wasn’t on the political radar in the province. Sure, there was a housing crisis but it wasn’t making headlines and it was being treated as a normal yearly occurrence—much like complaints about tuition.
The University of Saskatchewan Students’ Union decided to make it an issue and rallied public attention to the cause. They lobbied politicians and sold them on the need for action to help address the student housing crisis in Saskatoon.
The result: rare government funding of a student residence building.
Well done.
