GOVERNMENT RELATIONS & ADVOCACY
Stay in the Know
ACIFA is a non-partisan organization and its approach to government relations is to focus on post-secondary education issues and policy. ACIFA participates in policy discussions by responding to government papers, meeting with elected officials and bureaucrats, and participating in committees set up by the government. All of these activities assist policy makers in making informed decisions on post-secondary education issues.
ACIFA liaises with numerous provincial advocacy and post-secondary stakeholder organizations, both in Alberta and other provinces. Often, these collaborative efforts take the shape of closely-knit coalitions of organizations with interests held in common. Coalitions facilitate the sharing of resources and information in the interest of building effective lobbying and advocacy campaigns. ACIFA coordinates lobby and policy work with its university counterpart, the Confederation of Alberta Faculty Associations, and provincial student groups.
ACIFA researches information related to learning and working in Alberta’s post-secondary education sector. This work helps to inform our lobbying activities and policy positions.
LAPP Governance Model & Board Representation
Contact Your MLA
Email Letter Writing Campaign
Fall 2019
ACIFA is embarking on a massive email letter writing campaign to MLAs.
The intent is to ask our political representatives to take forward our concerns
and to consider the significant benefits (i.e. return on investment) of every
dollar spent on post-secondary education (PSE).
In order to pull this off successfully, we need your help. Please follow these three simple steps to get your concerns to your MLA:
Find the name and email address of the MLA that represents your school from the MLA List. You can also find the name and email address of the MLA that represents your home riding by clicking on the link to the government of Alberta’s website: http://www.assembly.ab.ca/lao/mla/mla_help.htm
From the provided talking points, choose and then copy and paste a paragraph or two into an email for your MLA. Please DON’T copy and paste the entire document. That might be dismissed as spam. Only pick a paragraph or two that resonates with you. There is nothing preventing you from adding your own concerns about the damage funding cuts will do to the PSE system. The intent of the provided talking points is to help, not to limit.
Fire off the email.
(Of particular interest are the visuals on pages 4 & 5.)
In May of 2019, an independent panel of experts was appointed to review Alberta’s finances and economy. The findings of the panel released in August 2019 have been termed the Blue Ribbon Panel Report on Alberta’s Finances, or the MacKinnon Panel on Alberta's Finances.
Conversation with Minister Marlin Schmidt, Minister of Advanced Education - September 2017
Conversation with Minister Marlin Schmidt, Minister of Advanced Education - October 2017
ACIFA's Acknowledgement and Appreciation
ACIFA's Submission to the Labour Board in Response to the Invitation for Intervenor Submissions Regarding Frontline Supervisors in the Bargaining Unit - April 2018
GOVERNMENT OF ALBERTA TUITION AND MANDATORY NON INSTRUCTIONAL FEES REVIEW
Click the link below to view ACIFA’s response to a request for stakeholder feedback by the Government of Alberta in the context of the Tuition and non-instructional fees review.
ACIFA'S SUBMISSION TO DISCUSSION GUIDE ON CHANGES TO THE PSLA
All publicly funded post-secondary institutions (PSI) in Alberta, have been governed by the Post-Secondary Learning Act (PSLA). This act provides the legal framework and prescribes the roles and responsibilities of all the players (Board of Governors, management, academic councils and Faculty associations) in our sector. In general, the PSLA has served us well. We might have continued to operate under the unchanged PSLA, if it was not for something that happened in Saskatchewan. The Saskatchewan provincial government unilaterally declared all public services in that province to be “essential services” and thereby removed the right to strike from them. Not surprisingly, the unions in Saskatchewan took their provincial government to court and in January 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada declared the right to strike a Charter of Rights and gave the Alberta government instructions to “remove the offensive language” from the PSLA. Consequently, the Alberta government is now in the process of aligning the PSLA with the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada and asked for our input. ACIFA has prepared a document which we hope will influence the outcome of this consultation.
Click the link below to view ACIFA’s submission to the discussion guide on the changes to the Post-Seconday Learning Act