Many students’ first encounter with democracy doesn’t happen at a ballot box in a provincial or federal election, but instead through their undergraduate student government.
Student governments levy mandatory fees, run multimillion-dollar budgets, employ permanent staff, and provide extracurricular services that can decide whether a student eats, sees a doctor, or finishes their degree. Yet, for years, student governments across Canada have also been riddled with financial scandals, uncomfortable questions about accountability, transparency, and what kind of democratic culture students are being introduced to.
From a legal and financial standpoint, student governments are unusual. Generally incorporated as not-for-profits under provincial law, they function as quasi-corporate bodies with budgets that can exceed $10,000,000. They’re also formally independent from universities, yet financially dependent on compulsory and optional fees collected from students. This autonomy has long been defended as necessary to effective advocacy and student self-governance. It can also create a well-funded and often poorly supervised environment with limited oversight, inconsistent enforcement, and slowly materializing consequences.
These claims aren’t speculative, for instance, in 2009, the Concordia Student Union launched a lawsuit against a former employee over alleged negligent behaviour involving more than $350,000. Two years later, students at Kwantlen Polytechnic University voted to remove an entire slate of directors following reports that roughly $2 million in student funds had been misused.
In 2012, allegations emerged that staff at the McMaster Association of Part-Time Students spent student fees on birthday parties, bridal showers and a vacation to Rome. That same year, the vice-president of finance of the University of Regina Students’ Union was accused of forging cheques.
More recent cases have followed a disturbingly familiar pattern. In 2023, the Toronto Metropolitan Students’ Union filed a lawsuit seeking $900,000 in damages after concerns about financial transparency led to the discovery of hundreds of thousands of dollars in what court documents described as “deliberate and willful financial mismanagement” by former executives.
The alleged spending included Toronto Raptors tickets and business-class flights. According to the statement of claim, the conduct was particularly egregious because the defendants were aware of an earlier 2018 scandal—after which the university had attempted to dissolve and replace the union—yet still “engaged in repeated financial improprieties,” including what the claim describes as “bad-faith efforts to defraud [the organization].”
In 2018, the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa faced allegations that executives and staff misappropriated student funds, including luxury purchases and unexplained transfers. What set the case apart was total organizational collapse: the university terminated its agreement with the federation, and students voted in a referendum to dissolve it entirely.
In many cases, investigations carried out by the very students represented by these organizations have helped expose these failures. Reporting at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus revealed conflicts of interest and persistent mismanagement within its student government. At Toronto Metropolitan University, student journalists obtained copies and photographs of credit card statements showing purchases made on cards issued to two executives, including thousands of dollars spent at restaurants, gas stations, clubs, and the LCBO.
The persistence of these incidents reveals structural rather than individual failures. Though student union constitutions and provincial or federal law may mandate financial reporting, these safeguards often depend on student government officials with limited time and experience—and, as history has shown, sometimes ulterior motives—to oversee permanent staff with far more expertise and institutional knowledge.
When fewer than a quarter of eligible voters routinely participate in student government elections, executives may have little incentive to ensure accountability or transparency to the students they nominally represent.
Over time, repeated failures make it easier for institutions and policymakers to question student autonomy altogether. In 2019, Doug Ford referenced the (formerly Ryerson) scandal in a tweet, arguing that students were “tired of paying excessive fees, only to see them wasted and abused.” That perspective has since been actualized as policy through Bill 33, which passed late last year and will grant the provincial government authority to review, regulate, and potentially make non-mandatory the fees collected by student unions.
As past cases show, these scandals rarely emerge suddenly. They tend to develop through ongoing gaps in oversight and enforcement that persist over time. Addressing these issues ultimately depends on student engagement and the extent to which elected representatives are held accountable.
Tags
Finance, Law, Provincial politics, student government
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