Advocacy
Advocacy is actively standing up for you and ensuring that your needs and concerns are heard, acknowledged, and addressed. Your elected student representatives are focused on representing and championing the issues that have a direct impact on your university journey in and out of the classroom.
As a non-partisan organization, the UASU serves as the collective voice of all 36,000 UAlberta undergraduates. We firmly believe in the accessibility and affordability of post-secondary education, which serve as our overarching priorities. That's why our advocacy priorities and policies are shaped by students themselves, ensuring that your voices hold significant weight in the decision-making process.
Your UASU provides essential advocacy work to make sure that students’ voices are prioritized in decision-making within university administration, federal and provincial departments, and elected officials at all levels of government.
Advocacy Areas
The UASU focuses on four main areas of advocacy to help better the lives of students.
As members of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA), your Students' Union tackles federal issues like financial aid, textbook costs and copyright, and student employment programs.
Recent wins:
- Helped keep Canada Student Grants 40% higher than pre-pandemic levels in 2023/24, 2024/25 and now 2025/26 as well.
- Helped eliminate interest on Canada Student Loans starting April 1, 2023.
- Collaborated with L'Association des Universitaires de la Faculté Saint-Jean (AUFSJ) to secure $13.4 million of overdue funding for Campus Saint-Jean (CSJ) in 2022.
As members of the Council of Alberta University Students (CAUS), we address provincial issues like tuition rates, student fees, on-campus mental health funding, and deferred maintenance for classrooms and infrastructure.
Recent wins:
- Resisted severe tuition increases, leading the government to announce a 2% cap on increases starting in Fall 2024.
- Secured a $2.5 million commitment from the Ministry of Advanced Education to address gender-based violence in campus communities in 2022.
- Advocated for increased employment opportunities and programs that incentivize businesses to hire youth, resulting in the launch of the $8 million Alberta Youth Employment Incentive in 2025/26.
As members of the Edmonton Student Alliance, we address issues like transit safety, housing affordability and more with City Council.
Recent wins:
- Advocated for increased student housing and affordability, resulting in the City of Edmonton's $15 million Downtown Student Housing Incentive in 2025/26.
- Shared our community's concerns about safety on campus with the City of Edmonton, contributing to a $13.5 million allocation towards transit safety in 2023.
We engage with all levels of University administration about a wide spectrum of student needs, including the cost of education, student spaces, student groups, instructor evaluations, teaching excellence, residence, meal plans, safety, mental health support, accessibility, student rights, and fair treatment.
Recent wins:
- Led the University to allocate $1.6 million to campus mental health resources in 2022/23 to better support students.
- Led the University to implement the Zero Textbook Cost course indicator in 2021/22. As of 2025, participating courses have saved students up to $43 million across four years.
- Led the University to implement the Exploration Credits program starting in 2023/24. This lets you take up to four electives in your degree on a credit/no credit basis so you don't have to worry about your GPA.
- Successfully advocated for the hiring of the Sexual Violence Prevention Coordinator (SVPC) in 2022.
- Advocated for and achieved the allocation of family lounge in Rutherford Library in 2022.
- Negotiated the elimination of the $40 Instalment Fee for students paying tuition over two semesters, saving students around $1 million per year, in 2023.
- Secured $200,000 in university funding to build a food pantry for the Campus Food Bank in 2023.
- Negotiated a revamp of the Moderate Standard of Living calculation, boosting bursary funding by an additional $1 million in 2023/24.
- Prevented the University from introducing an automatic textbook billing model, leading them to rethink how to address textbook affordability in 2023/24.
- Advocated for and achieved an increase in international tuition offset, resulting in nearly $1.2 million in additional financial assistance for international students in 2023/24.
- Negotiated the Exam Reschedule Procedure with the University to expand the options for students to defer an exam if they have exams too close together in 2024.
- Participated in the development of the Student Academic Integrity Policy, leading to the creation of much more student-friendly regulations for students in 2023/24.
Our top Advocacy focuses
Get Out The Vote
Care about how much university costs? Affordability? Mental health? What about student financial aid that you don’t have to pay back?
Voting in the next election helps get student needs met.
Our campaign is focused on helping students get to the polls on election day. We’ll make the voting process easier for you if you pledge to vote.
Students’ Rights
Students' rights are spread across any number of University policies and documents, so they can be hard to find. That's why we worked for years to get the University to publish the Charter of Student Rights and Responsibilities.
The Charter points you to the official policy documents that explain your rights in any number of situations. It should help you understand procedural fairness and how to appeal unfair decisions. It should also help you to make complaints, navigate disciplinary processes, and avoid choices that can put you and others at risk.
Campus Sexual Violence
Sexual violence is one of the most intractable problems of university education. Statistics Canada estimates that among post-secondary students, one out of 10 women and one out of 25 men experience sexual assault each year. At UAlberta, that would equate to 2,500 undergraduates and 600 graduate students per year.
Learn about how your UASU is advocating against sexual violence for a safer campus community.
ARRC Recommendations
In the 2018-2019 academic year, the Aboriginal Relations & Reconciliation Committee produced a comprehensive list of recommendations to the Students' Union. These recommendations, if followed, will contribute to reconciliation efforts by the Students' Union and on campus.