With the federal election little more than a month away, two national student organizations representing hundreds of thousands of students are planning to lobby on student issues and encourage students to head to the polls.
The Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), which represent over half a million students and is the largest Canadian student organization, launched the It’s No Secret campaign, which is aimed at getting federal politicians to talk about student issues such as rising debt.
Bilan Arte, national CFS chairperson, said the goal of the campaign is to “make student issues, election issues.” Arte also said another objective is to mobilize the youth vote.
Arte said the CFS is advocating for the federal government to introduce a grant-based system like the one in Newfoundland and Labrador.
“There is a Canada Student Grants Program,” she said. “But by and large students are financing their education when they’re applying to the federal government for support through the form of loans.”
Arte said students are unable to pay their student loans because of high youth unemployment and an insecure job market.
“Student debt greatly hinders young people’s ability to successfully integrate into society and to our economy,” she said.
CFS suggested money invested in the Canada Student Loans Program, tax credits, and savings schemes be invested in a grant-based system, Arte said.
Its smaller national counterpart representing 300,000 students, the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA), is focusing solely on its student voter mobilization through its Get Out The Vote campaign.
“This campaign gives students information [about] all the different parties so they can become informed of their options as well as the information on how to actually go and vote,” said Erik Queenan, chair of CASA.
CASA collects student emails, phone numbers, and postal codes on campuses across Canada that will be used for the Get Out The Vote campaign, Queenan said.
“We follow up with a phone call the day before election day and tell them where the nearest polling station is,” he said.
Queenan said CASA also emails information on different parties and voter registration.
Students will be participating in the CFS campaign by organizing and attending debates on and off campus, according to Arte.
“They’re getting active online and making sure they are a part of the conversation wherever it’s happening, be that Twitter or Facebook.”
Arte added the campaign is also aimed at “ensuring that young people are actually educated and mobilized around the issue of voting itself.”
Not everyone knows how to vote if they’re living away from home, she said.
“We’re doing a lot of work to do voter education and ensuring people are educated on the electoral process and know how to successfully cast their ballot.”
Jon Pammett, a professor in the department of political science at Carleton, said campaigns like this can be effective.
“You shouldn’t really downgrade the possibility that people will do things if you ask them to do them,” he said. “I mean, it may be that just the feeling they may never have thought of it or they may just need a little encouragement, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it would have some impact.”
Queenan said this is the first time CASA has organized a voter drive campaign, focusing on student debt in the past.
“We kind of adopted what a lot of political parties have done in their get out the vote strategy but made it completely non-partisan,” he said.
