National Union of Students (Canada) - Creation and Initial Development

Creation and Initial Development

NUS/UNE was created by students in 1972 as a response to looming post secondary education cuts from the federal government. The federal government instituted a ceiling on Post Secondary Education matching grants to provinces and territories. The prospect of reduced federal transfers for universities, increasing costs, and an all-loan student aid plan proposed by the Council of Ministers of Education, compelled students to reorganize where the Canadian Union of Students had left off in 1969.

During 1972, in the province of Ontario, the Ontario Federation of Students (OFS) was organized in response to fee deregulation and tuition increases. A member local of OFS was the University of Windsor Students' Administrative Council, which was pressing for the reorganization of a national student group. In May 1972 an inaugural conference was hosted at University of Windsor in which 26 Canadian university student unions attended. This conference laid the foundation and set the priorities and objectives of a new national student organization, which was very similar to the priorities and objectives of the Canadian Union of Students (NUS/UNE's predecessor organization of the 1960s).

On 3-5 November 1972, the National Union of Students/l'Union nationale étudiants was officially formed in Ottawa by 51 delegates representing student councils and unions from across the country. Notably absent from the NUS/UNE at this time were Québec students and Atlantic Canadian students as their delegates were reported to have walked out.

Between 1973 and 1976, initial policy was formed and finances were organized and solidified in order to consolidate the national student movement. During these years the office was moved from University of British Columbia's Alma Mater Society in Vancouver, British Columbia to Ottawa, Ontario. In 1976/1977 the NUS/UNE was more fully organized and financially stabilized with the Atlantic Federation of Students, British Columbia Federation of Students, Alberta Federation of Students and Ontario Federation of Students, as affiliates, however, their partnership relationship with l'association nationale des étudiants du Québec (Aneq) was tenuous. The national office of the NUS/UNE employed three staff people and several campaigns were launched. By the end of 1976, NUS/UNE was on firm organizational and financial ground and had by this time launched several nationally coordinated campaigns that involved grass-roots participation at the campus level.