Your KFA in the News

Dear KFA Colleagues,

In case our administrators accidentally misplaced a few recent headlines in KPU in the News, we thought we’d help out by putting together our own KFA In the News.

Over the past week the KFA has been keeping the faculty voice front and centre across the major media outlets in B.C. and beyond. Our message about layoffs, international student policy, and the future of public post-secondary was carried by:

• CBC Early Edition and CBC News
• Global News
• CTV News (via youtube)
• Daily Hive here and here (be aware that there are a lots of popup ads on this site)
• CKNW’s Mike Smyth Show or here
• A letter to the editor authored by John Shepherd was published in the Vancouver Sun 

Together, these stories reached thousands of people across B.C and Canada. The public conversation is no longer limited to KPU’s internal budget documents — it is about the future of post-secondary education in this province. Our goal is to continue to pressure all levels of government to come to the table with real solutions to the post-secondary funding crisis.

Alongside our media outreach, I met yesterday with the Hon. Jessie Sunner, Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills & MLA for Surrey-Newton, to press the case directly to government. We emphasized the urgent need for both levels of government to come to the table with sustainable funding solutions that protect faculty jobs, ensure student access, and safeguard the future of public post-secondary in B.C.

We’re not stopping here. Our Protect Education, Protect Communities campaign put this issue on the federal agenda over the summer, and now FPSE in cooperation with our national affiliate — the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) — is preparing to launch a new national campaign to build on that momentum. This campaign will connect our local struggles with a broader, country-wide push for sustainable funding and policy reform. It will also be an opportunity to jointly engage your provincial and federal leadership on the crisis developing in Canadian post-secondary education in advance of the federal budget.

It is our hope that, together, we are forcing government and administration to face the truth: unless they act, we will lose faculty, programs, and opportunities that can’t easily be rebuilt. We are keeping the pressure on to challenge the most recent round of layoffs and ensure that recall remains a real path back for our colleagues.

In solidarity,

Mark Diotte

President, Kwantlen Faculty Association

president@yourkfa.ca