With the Ford government being the first to take aim at compulsory student unionism in Canada (he will not be the last; in Alberta, Jason Kenney’s UCP has a similar policy resolution on its books), it is worth taking a more detailed look at how the move to make fees optional has played out elsewhere.  Specifically, Down Under, where these policy ideas were first put into practice in the under the name “Voluntary Student Unionism” (VSU, in Australia) and “Voluntary Student Membership” (VSM, New Zealand). 

In both cases, student unions were initially set up in a manner similar to the dominant Canadian model: membership was compulsory for students, and the organizations represented students campus-wide.  In Australia (and possibly New Zealand, I’m not quite as familiar with the set-up there), there were two small differences:  first, what we call student unions had functions which were sometimes split between two distinct organizations: the “Students’ Representative Council”, which handled the political end of things, and the “Guild”, which handled all the clubs and services.  And second: athletics were mostly organized by student groups, rather than by the universities (I am not an expert in this area, but I believe this was true in Canada a century ago as well – the “athletic associations” which managed intercollegiate sports originated as a separate order of campus organization, enjoying university patronage and independent management). 

In New Zealand, VSM started out as something which students themselves could decide upon; that is, students could vote to make their own student unions non-mandatory, which one or two actually did.  Then in 2005, the Australian government passed its “VSU” bill, which made it illegal for universities to collect money for any student organization.  The organizations were still permitted to exist, but they had to individually go and enroll students and collect their monies themselves.  In a couple of cases, the student unions were very successful in maintaining membership: at the University of West Australia, for instance, 60% of students continued their membership.  But at most institutions, membership fell to under 10% of students, with very severe consequences for student life generally.  Later, in 2011, the New Zealand government followed suit and changed its VSM legislation to more closely resemble the Australian one.

In Australia, the outcomes of VSU were fairly dramatic: representation of students declined (which was a bigger deal for matters inside universities, such as academic appeals, than it was for things like national student organizations), and the number of student clubs declined dramatically.  In some places, services like athletics and child care were substantially affected.   (A good summary of the effects can be found here– my thanks to Gavin Moodie for the pointer.)    A later Labour government partially reversed the policy by allowing universities themselves to charge an extra fee for certain prescribed services such as athletics and child care, but the ban against collecting fees on behalf of student organizations stayed.

In New Zealand, the causes (right-wing governments sticking it to organizations they disliked) and effects (impoverished on-campus life) were similar, but there a work-around was found.  In at least some cases, institutions simply charged a fee to students for services (including, as I understand it, student representation) and then simply subcontracted those services to the student union.  This mostly solved the problem though obviously it is a bit weird/touchy for students to “represent” their members to an organization to which one is a sub-contracted. 

(One could argue that we have the same problem in most of Canada, where nothing but good will requires universities to collect fees on behalf of student associations.  As recent events at the University of Ottawa have shown, student unions may not be sub-contractors, but they still live at the sufferance of institutions just as surely as if they were sub-contractors.  The same is not true in Quebec where student unions, provided they can achieve accreditation status, have independent legal rights including a requirement that institutions collect fees on their behalf).

We in Canada can learn a lot from these examples.  First, we can recognize the role that student unions play in what I call the “civil society” of universities: even if you don’t like the way they carry out their representative functions (and Lord knows there is a lot of performative nonsense there), their responsibility for student clubs and their infrastructure matter a lot and campus life to a certain extent dies in their absence, which impoverishes the student experience.  Second, we should note that there is a heck of a difference between policies in which students can “opt-out” of services (which is what the wording of the Ontario policy currently promises) and those in which students are required to positively “opt-in” (the Australian version) – the latter is a *much* harder environment in which to operate.  And third, we can recognize that there are some potential work-arounds to a policy which goes after student unions. 

More on that last point tomorrow.