This article is a contribution to The Counter Signal’s opinion section.
At a time when some students are living in their cars just to afford a post-secondary education, it’s unthinkable that they’re required to take out loans to fund the bloated student union industrial complex.
Yet that’s exactly what’s happening across Alberta. Student unions have turned into cash-hungry machines, exploiting the most vulnerable students to bankroll far-left causes that have nothing to do with their education. Students have no choice, in fact the Post Secondary Learning Act legally requires them to enlist with the union in order to get a degree.
Radical Agendas Masquerading as “Diversity”
These unions have formed an unholy alliance between far-left intersectionality and radical ideologies. The worst part? They’re dragging innocent students along for the ride, whether they like it or not. Take the University of Calgary’s Student Union (U of C SU), for instance. Part of their strategic vision includes celebrating “diversity in all its intersecting forms” and combating “attitudes and systems that lead to inequity.” What does that even mean? It’s communist gobbledygook.
Let’s be clear: this means they value equal outcomes over equal opportunity, “lived experiences” over logic, and trans rights over women’s rights. They funnel money into these extremist agendas, while some pupils can’t even afford rent. It’s sickening.
No Opt-Out: Trapped in the Woke Agenda
Right now, if you’re a student, you’re automatically a member of this highly political union. There’s no opt-out process, no choice in the matter. These aren’t even labour unions, which have can at least defend their activities by saying they benefit the working conditions of workers. With student unions, kids are enlisted into woke ideological crusade the moment they step onto campus. They’re trapped in a system that demands their money without giving them a thing in return.
By the end of an undergrad’s four years at the University of Calgary, a student union will have pocketed $600 per pupil—money that’s largely financed by student loan debt.
And what do they do with this cash? They fund reckless, ideological playground politics. They even hosted the NDP for an election pit-stop, in an effort to help overthrow the Conservative government (despite more and more young Canadians identifying as conservatives.)
One year, the U of C SU even sued their own university over petty backroom grievances. Students end up paying lawyers on both sides—first through union dues and then again through tuition dollars.
Wasting Student Money on Propaganda
But the waste doesn’t stop there. When they’re not lighting money on fire, they’re using it to fuel their activist media. Take The Gauntlet and The Gateway, the U of C and U of A’s respective student-funded rags. These aren’t newspapers—they’re propaganda machines for socialist causes, financed by student debt.
And it gets even more absurd. U of C students are forced to pay for programs like the “Refugee Student Assistance Program.” Think about that: students who are already struggling with debt are being made to finance refugee students. It’s beyond belief.
Who Do Student Unions Really Represent?
Meanwhile, the student union pretends to care about the rising cost of living for undergrads. They lament over students struggling to find jobs while boasting about lobbying federal ministers to remove work hour restrictions for international students. Whose interests are they really serving? Certainly not those of the average Alberta student.
Student unions have stopped representing the majority of students. Many students are fed up with the direction these unions are taking, but they’re powerless to do anything about it. There’s no opt-out option for union dues, no way to escape the ideological grip of these organizations.
Time for Alberta to Step In
It’s time to give students a choice. Not just to protect their right to study without also subscribing to a Marxist-inspired group of future NDP MLAs, but to save them from a years long student debt hangover, where they scrape together whatever cash they can to pay back what the Little-Lenins pickpocketed from them during their years on campus.
Student unions have become unchecked, unruly, and un-Canadian. Alberta’s government needs to step in and make student union membership voluntary. If we weren’t living through the greatest affordability crisis of a generation, maybe it wouldn’t be such a pressing issue, but with students living on the streets, this just can’t wait.
