Advocating for Graduate Students: UCGSA’s Joint Provincial Budget Submission

Last week, UCGSA and our partners at the University of Calgary Students’ Union and the Students’ Association of Bow Valley College released our joint provincial budget submission.

During the provincial budgetary cycle, individuals and organizations can submit spending and regulatory requests to the government up until approximately January, after which the Treasury Board and Ministry of Finance set the spending priorities for the next fiscal year. In our submission, we emphasized the importance of expanding unrestricted funding for universities (for example, the Campus Alberta Grant, which is the primary means by which graduate students are paid), increasing student housing options (especially for families with dependents), and included briefs on our two white papers: Soften the Blow, which calls for the adoption of Quebec’s tribunal-based “soft rent cap” model, and A Meritorious Alberta Advantage, which calls for expanding the number of research scholarships available to Alberta graduate students. The latter white paper, which was also part of our Mintz Panel submission, was officially released to the public last week. We’ll have more updates on that paper in the near future!

The asks in this submission were informed by responses to the Annual Survey. This is only one aspect of our provincial advocacy: additional asks will be presented through briefs, presentations, and meetings both during and outside of the provincial budgetary cycle.

The submission can be viewed in our Policy Library. For any questions, please reach out to advocacy.gsa@ucalgary.ca.