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 38,000 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.
Where We Advocate
The UASU advocates to the University and all levels of government to improve the student experience.
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:
- Secured $635 million for the Student Work Placement Program in Budget 2025 to create 55,000 new work-integrated learning jobs across Canada in 2026/27 and extend the program to 2028/29.
- 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 Alberta Students' Executive Council, 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:
- Secured a $1.2 million municipal and federal investment in 2025/26 to improve transit ridership data collection in Edmonton, which will help future student leaders maximize the value of the U-Pass, while permanently enhancing ETS' ability to allocate safety resources toward the areas and times that need them the most.
- 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.
Long-Term Advocacy
Provincial Operating Grant
The cost of education, especially the net cost after financial aid, is a fundamental long-term priority for the UASU. In 2019, the Government of Alberta announced a 33% funding reduction ($224M) to the UofA spread out over three years. Following the cut, the University’s provincial Operating Grant has remained flat for multiple years, despite rising costs and inflationary pressures.
Provincial Operating Grants are meant to support core university operations and reduce the impact of those costs on student tuition. However, when operating funding doesn’t keep pace, post-secondaries are pushed to cover more of their costs through other revenues, often increasing the pressure on tuition and fees, making affordability worse for students.
That’s why the UASU advocates for an increase to the Operating Grant that will allow education to remain affordable while protecting the quality of learning that has defined the UofA and supported Alberta for over a century.
Zero Textbook Cost
Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) is a core affordability priority for the UASU. After sustained UASU advocacy, the University of Alberta implemented a ZTC course indicator directly in Bear Tracks in 2021, making it one of the first institutions in Canada to embed ZTC into its course selection system. Thousands of students now use the ZTC indicator when building schedules, saving up to $8-15 million from ZTC-marked courses per year since the program began.
The UASU also works to build awareness and instructor engagement through initiatives like the ZTCup awards, presented at General Faculties Council to recognize faculties with the highest proportion of ZTC classes.
Looking forward, the UASU is advocating for the next phase of ZTC. This includes implementing a Bookstore Submission Policy so courses without submitted paid materials are automatically verified as ZTC, paired with investment in Open Educational Resources (OER), clearer program identity, faculty- and department-level targets and stronger governance and data stewardship.
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.
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.
Find out how the UASU is advocating against sexual violence for a safer campus community and read the 2025/26 UASU SGBV Task Force Report to learn more.
Major Executive Efforts Through The Years
The 2025/26 Executive Committee was led by President Pedro Almeida, alongside VP Academic Katie Tamsett, VP External Abdul Abbasi, VP Operations and Finance Nathan Thiessen and VP Student Life Logan West.
The 2025/26 Executive Goals involved progress on four major priorities:
- Enhancing Student Experience and Engagement
- Fostering a Safe, Accessible and Inclusive Campus
- Improving Academic and Professional Development
- Strengthening Organizational Capacity and Financial Sustainability
You can read the January 2026 update on the Executive Goals here.
The following are some of the major advocacy documents produced in 2025/26:
- UASU Advising Priorities Report
- Zero Textbook Cost: Moving Forward
- Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Task Force Final Report
- University Safety Infrastructure Investment Report
- Election Task Force Report
- Reducing the Police Information Check (PIC) Fee for Students in Mandatory Unpaid Practicums
- Increasing RhPAP Funding to Better Support Nursing & Allied Health Students
- Menstrual Impacts on Academic Success Report
- Escalating Academic Concerns Report
- UASU Supplementary Provincial Budget Submission
This year, the UASU also played a role in the development of Sowing the Seeds of Tomorrow - 2025 Edmonton Student Alliance Municipal Priorities and the 2026 Provincial Budget Submission for Post-Secondary Students.
2025/26 also saw the announcement of the Winter 2026 ONEcard Access Pilot Project, the Downtown Student Housing Incentive, the Alberta Youth Employment Incentive, and the Student Work Placement Program, as well as the development of the 2026-2030 UASU Strategic Plan and the set of principles for the multi-phase transfer of student group event approvals to the UASU from the University.