At the end of last semester, the AMS travelled to Queen’s Park to meet with of provincial parliament (MPPs).
Vice-President (University Affairs) Ruth Osunde, ArtSci ’25, and Commissioner of External Affairs Dreyden George, ArtSci ’26, attended the annual Student Advocacy Conference hosted at Queen’s Park on the week of Nov. 19. The conference is comprised of student leaders from the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA) who represent nine student associations across Ontario.
The conference, located at the site of the Ontario Legislative Building, aimed for student leaders to advocate for the needs of the students each leader represents on issues such as food insecurity and housing.
Through their OUSA hip, the AMS gained access to the conference, allowing them to watch Question Period, a time when MPPs ask questions to government officials, meet with relevant government stakeholders, including Ministers, and potentially petition to Ministers or send them letters, George said in an interview with The Journal.
Student leaders met with over 18 MPPs, government stakeholders, and political staffers. Throughout their discussions, they focused on four pillars—investing in post-secondary education, housing, food insecurity, and responses to hate-motivated attacks.
George said OUSA met with MPP for Ottawa-West Nepean Chandra Pasma and a member of the New Democratic Party after discussions with other student leaders. During the meeting, OUSA advocated for increased funding for post-secondary education. Following the meeting, Pasma sent a letter to the Minister of Colleges and Universities Nolan Quinn, urging the Government to provide more financial for post-secondary institutions.
The purpose of the conference was to get in touch with provincial leaders and advocate for Queen’s students, and students in Ontario post-secondary institutions as a whole, to make leaders more aware of the issues students face, Osunde said in an interview with The Journal.
“We talked about how, currently, we’re seeing a lot of issues in how Universities are currently funded and how that model is kind of out of date at this moment and we need to make sure that University remains more accessible to students who want to attend,” Osunde said.
George said the OUSA student leaders advocated for greater funding for food banks on campus and to create greater rent control for areas where students live across Ontario. Osunde also said she brought awareness to hate motivated acts happening on campuses across Ontario during her discussions with MPPs.
“When it came to [talking about hate motivated attacks] we made it very clear that what we were talking about didn’t just pertain to the recent conflict in the Middle East and that it contained hate motivated attacks as a whole,” Osunde commented.
While George and Osunde aren’t sure if their efforts will bring immediate change, they were pleased to have made connections that can be ed on to their successors, ensuring continued advocacy for student needs at the governmental level.
“Advocacy isn’t a very cut-and-dry process,” Osunde said. “It’s something sequential that takes time, and based on the conversations we were having at Queen’s Park we’re so grateful to every MPP that agreed to meet with us and have some wonderful conversations.”
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