Pam Hrick: next National Director of CASA?

Spring must be hiring season in Canada. After a long and cold winter, who doesn’t want to bust out of their rut with a new job, a new desk and maybe even a new computer? RFP is hiring, perhaps you’ve heard, but we’re not the only ones.

The Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA) announced on February 24, that they will be hiring the next National Director of the organization. Current National Director, Zach Churchill, is one of the resume receivers, so presumably, he will not be re-running.

The hiring committee will submit a short list for an election at a national on March 26. The successful candidate will follow in the footsteps of former NDs such as Alex Usher.

Ryerson students have never been members of CASA, and so their structure is elusive to many of us who are familiar with democratic structures like CESAR or the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS). CASA’s structure is a bizarre hybrid between hiring and democracy, and begs the question, doesn’t CASA trust its member organizations to elect the best candidate on their own, rather than twisting it into a semi-hiring process?

One unlikely candidate for this position is Pam Hrick. Pam is former president of the Student Federation at the University of Ottawa (SFUO), a federal Liberal and the lone woman in the finals for last year’s CBC’s show Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister.

Pam has never been a member of a CASA student union. In 2008 the SFUO voted to join the Canadian Federation of Students.

Interestingly, there are no requirements for potential applicants included in the job description. There are requirements, though, on the home page job announcement. There are no provisions that the National Director be a student: the successful candidate must have a degree or the equivalent combination of education and/or work experience (the jury is out on what amount of work constitutes a degree. According to the government of Ontario and many other provinces, it is a degree only that constitutes a degree).

Pam has never been a member of CASA but she meets all criteria for candidacy: experience “dealing with media,” experience in management, strong Liberal bias…

CASA doesn’t take enough heat in the student press for its version of democracy. While Pam’s candidacy is currently only rumour, it would be a big story if she were to become CASA’s next National Director. If she gets hired, student unions represented by CASA will have a chief lobbyist and official spokesperson who has never been a member and, whose former student union is now a member of the CFS.

The CASA Misses Chance to Lobby Federal Candidates on Students' Main Priorities

With the Federal election in full swing, advocacy organizations of all types are trying to influence political parties to get the best promises possible. Just as these groups kick into high gear, so too do the media outlets.

Media groups voraciously seek out angles, interviews, cute stories, scandals and anything else they can get their hands on to keep an audience tuned in. This is a prime opportunity for interest groups to get their messages out to the public and politicians.

One interest group, the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA) has recently launched web-campaign which they sell as “All you Need to Know to Make an Educated Vote.” Notable components to the site include some information on voting, and press releases, a blog, and a short video.

On second glance it is clear that missing among the CASA’s campaign is any attention to the issue that is arguably most important to students—tuition fees. This is first apparent in their poll asking what is the most important change needed for post-secondary education in Canada. Strangely, of the four questions, none give an option for reducing, freezing or, heaven forbid eliminating tuition fees. There isn't even an “other” option.

Unfortunately, it appears that the price of tuition fees isn’t on their radar at all for this election. At best, this is an embarrassing misreading of the students’ priorities that they purport to represent. What's more, the CASA’s “solutions” ignores calls from federal candidates themselves for dedicated federal funding to be used to help offset tuition fees.

For example, the CASA does not link to the NDP’s “Education & training your family can afford” among their links to that party’s education platform. Instead they characterized the “NDP Party Platform” as only relating to the promise to medical students, which was announced in their plan for healthcare. Contrary to the all-encompassing website it purports to be, the rest of the “Party Platforms” section is out of date, with the exception of a section on the Green Party.

This organization appears to simply steer clear of tuition fees altogether. A closer reading of the CASA’s website and their press releases reveals a disconnect between their own tuition fee policy and the consistent absence of this issue from their lobby priorities. The CASA has come on board with other organisations who do call for a national strategy on post-secondary education, including dedicated transfer payments. Such a method of payments could be used to help offset the cost that students pay, making this an important federal issue. The average student must be disappointed, however, that the CASA is missing the boat on integrating into the discussion calls for lower tuition fees. Instead their sights are aimed lower, calling for a Pan-Canadian Dataset.

Students deserve better than this. When an organization’s lobby efforts do not represent their paying membership, students ultimately lose.

Student ‘representatives’ who call unqualified praise for party platforms 'lobbying' would better create the change they seek by taking jobs from the Liberals or the Greens and working from within these parties. If this is the CASA’s idea of making the post-secondary education system better, they should leave lobbying for real change to students.