CASA’s Need Not Apply report proposes revisions to Canada Student Federal Assistance program
By Andreea Timis, August 3 2024—
On July 4, the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA) released the results of a newly commissioned report detailing the challenges faced by post-secondary students when accessing federal financial aid. CASA — a non-profit federal lobbying organization composed of post-secondary student associations across Canada — acts as a voice on behalf of students to the federal government.
According to CASA’s website — demographic groups such as students with disabilities, students with dependents and mature students face more significant barriers to accessing student financial aid. The objective remains to devise an equitable, all-inclusive assessment criteria grounded in adequate measures of a student’s living circumstances to facilitate access to student funding.
Need Not Apply
The report — Need Not Apply — is a 28-page document that proposes adopting a more needs-based approach to accessing federal financial aid in Canada. The sections outlined within the report depict a wide variety of student groups facing systemic barriers ranging from students with disabilities to dependent students — including married students, students with children over the age of 12 and students experiencing abuse or coercive control from parents or partners.
Within each section, Need Not Apply outlines the concerns with the Canada Student Federal Assistance (CSFA) program’s current policies relevant to a student’s unique living conditions. The problem arises largely from misguided assumptions about family structures, financial arrangements and living situations faced by students.
As an example, the current CSFA program erroneously assumes that students living in abusive households have the opportunity to move out, without accounting for potential lack of resources and family members or partners who might prevent them from leaving.
Need Not Apply also used graphical representations of post-secondary funding by income source and legislative precedents as a piggyback to craft recommendations for specific updates to the CSFA’s current needs assessment to better reflect specific student requirements.
In the example listed above, Need Not Apply mentioned that the CSFA program already classifies students as independent after departing from abusive situations. However, if an individual is initially unable to relocate, they remain dependent and will not have access to funding provided by the CSFA. The listed recommendations for this particular circumstance were then to create an option for married/common-law students to apply as independent, thus removing the need for spousal consent during loan applications.
The benefits of making Need Not Apply publicly available
The ultimate goal of Need Not Apply is to ensure that students receive financial aid based on proper assessment that reflects their lived experiences.
In an interview with the Gauntlet, SU Vice President External Mateusz Salmassi — the former director of advocacy for CASA — spoke about the report.
“The purpose of [Need Not Apply] is to identify barriers for students facing a wide variety of challenges […] to accessing federal student financial aid,” Salmassi said. “The benefit of publishing such a report is to guide student associations in their federal advocacy and to create an easily accessible breakdown of the barriers that many students face in accessing financial aid from the federal government,” Salmassi continued.
Salmassi confirmed that Need Not Apply offers solutions specifically tailored to each unique scenario and proposes updates to accommodate for potential changes in a student’s circumstances.
“The recommendations are quite precise. I think that the report does do a good job of acknowledging and looking at changing circumstances for students who might be seeking federal financial aid,” Salmassi said. “This report is meant to be quite comprehensive. [And] if there are scenarios or barriers that haven’t yet been identified, it’s always about finding out what those are and seeing where you can fill in the gaps.”
Opportunities from the Students’ Union
Salmassi also discussed Advocacy Week, an annual event held by CASA in Ottawa each November. The event is led by CASA’s student union members, who create the advocacy policies for that week.
“Every year, CASA organizes an Advocacy Week [when] the over 100 student union delegates from across Canada directly lobby [Members of Parliament], Senators, Ministers and the Prime Minister’s office as well,” Salmassi said. “And so a report like [Need Not Apply] can inform these meetings quite a bit.”
Salmassi explained that student’s unions always have the flexibility to hold federal advocacy efforts outside of Advocacy Week so students don’t feel as though they need to wait to have their demands addressed.
“It’s just a matter of collaborating with CASA. Sometimes there might be a strategic effort, like focusing on this or that person [or] policy maker, depending on the issue,” Salmassi explained. “And if, for example, [anyone] were to identify a scenario for a student that is not touched on in this report that could or needs to be touched on, students can always contact me and I’m happy to pass that on to CASA.”
For more information about the report, visit the CASA website.