DSU Meets with Mike Savage

Yesterday myself and the DSU's Vice President (Education), Mark Coffin, met with Dartmouth-Cole Harbour Member of Parliament, Mike Savage.

In our meeting with Mike we talked about some of the key advocacy topics that CASA and the DSU are pushing for. 

Due to the current economic situation the government is looking for projects that it will be able to invest in to help stimulate the economy and we feel that education is the silver bullet to do that. There is approximately $5 billion in deferred maintenance needed for Canada's colleges and universities. If the government places $1.2 billion in the upcoming budget for university and college deferred maintenance this will assist the construction industry and education through attracting students, faculty, staff, and donations to our institutions. 

The current economic situation may also leave post secondary institutions across the country with freezes or claw backs in operational funding from the provinces. We are hoping that the federal government will bolster spending for these institutions. The amount for the transfer that would be needed is between $500 million - $1 billion.

Similar to when ANSSA met with Megan Leslie on Monday we also discussed a federal funding distribution with Mike Savage. The federal funding distribution is something that ANSSA feels is very important to help fund our post secondary institutions. This is why ANSSA brings this topic of conversation up to both provincial and federal governments because the province needs the money from the federal government.

We also discussed the Canada Student Grant Program and what we are disappointed in and what we hope the government may include. The main disappointments in the new program and what differs from the Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation is that the grants are income based and not needs based, the other disappointment is that there is not a research component to the system. Without a research component we may not be able to be knowledge towards trends such as who is and who is now able to access post secondary education.

Finally Mark discussed the report he authored to Elections Canada which focused on issues that students faced when is came to voting in the fall's election.

Overall the meeting with Mike went very well and he seemed receptive to many of the issues we are currently focusing on.