During a brief period when the Student Choice Initiative (SCI) was in force, the post-secondary students in Ontario were given a choice to opt-out of “non-essential” fees collected by universities on behalf of student unions. The policy was in place effectively for only the fall semester of 2019 before getting struck down by the Ontario Superior Court in November 2019, whose ruling was upheld by the Court of Appeal for Ontario in August 2021.
The opt-out rates at Ontarian undergraduate student unions varied as evidenced by the table below. These statistics are not ideal, as they are simple averages and do not take into account the number of students eligible or the fee amounts; and there is a lack of publicly available information on the opt-out percentages. But for the purposes of this article, they shall be sufficient.
| Student Union | Opt-out rate |
| Algoma University Students’ Union | The numbers were not made public. |
| Brock University Students’ Union | 20% |
| Carleton University Students’ Association | 15% |
| Central Student Association at the University of Guelph | 35% |
| Lakehead University Student Union | 65% |
| Students’ General Association of Laurentian University | The total opt-out numbers were not released publicly, but the lowest opt-out rate for a single fee was 70%. |
| McMaster Student Union | 32% |
| Nipissing University Student Union | 32% |
| OCAD Student Union | The numbers were not made public. |
| Ontario Tech Student Union | The numbers were not made public. |
| Alma Mater Society at Queen’s University | 15% |
| Toronto Metropolitan Students’ Union (formerly Ryerson Students’ Union) | 38.5% |
| Trent Central Student Association | The numbers were not made public. |
| Association étudiante de l’Université de Hearst | Didn’t exist at the time of the Student Choice Initiative. |
| Association étudiante de l’Université de l’Ontario français | Didn’t exist at the time of the Student Choice Initiative. |
| University of Ottawa Students’ Union | 20% |
| University of Toronto Students’ Union | 23.6% |
| Waterloo Undergraduate Student Association | 17.28% |
| University of Windsor Students’ Alliance | The numbers were not made public. |
| University Students’ Council at Western University | 16.04% |
| Wilfrid Laurier University Students’ Union | The numbers were not made public. |
| York Federation of Students | 17% |
| Provincial average: | 26.65% |
Based on the numbers available, the impact of SCI was bad, but not catastrophic. It is worth noting that the policy was in place only for one semester, with various methods of implementation by universities (it’s difficult to opt-out, when one doesn’t know they have this option). It is certainly possible that the opt-out rates would rise with time, had the SCI not been quashed by the court. There is no way to know the alternative history, but what we do know is the impact of a similar policy in Australia, implemented long ago in 2005. The 80-90% opt-out rates have been living rent-free in my head, so I decided to look into the factors of ‘success’ of voluntary student unionism in Australia. I sought to understand why this policy has been so resilient in Australia for over 20 years and I found several lessons applicable to countries that still have compulsory student union membership, such as Canada.
Implementation matters, a lot
The text of Higher Education Support Amendment (Abolition of Compulsory Up-front Student Union Fees) Act 2005 is unambiguous.
“A higher education provider must not require a person enrolled with, or seeking to enrol with, the provider to pay to the provider or any other entity an amount for the provision to students of an amenity, facility or service that is not of an academic nature, unless the person has chosen to use the amenity, facility or service.”
The wording does not leave much room for different reading on how to implement the voluntary student union membership, or any other non-academic service. Students have to actively opt-in, or in other words, choose to pay for membership or service, as opposed to opting-out. When presented with a choice on the screen, students would have to check the box, not uncheck it. They wouldn’t have to go to a student portal during a certain period of time to opt-out of certain fees which they would have otherwise had to pay by default.
This did not seem to be the case in Ontario back in 2019, judging by the publicly available opt-out rates. Any method of the opt-out implementation that requires students to actively search for the unchecking box will decrease opt-out rates. Opting students out by default will have the inverse effect. Reading section 21.1 of the Supporting Children and Students Act, 2025 gives me the impression that the Ontarian government could mirror the Australian approach, which will require a serious mobilization of efforts on the part of student unions. Speaking of which…
Student apathy
During the 1970s, the Australian Liberal Students’ Federation agitated for voluntary student organisation membership, but were unable to convince students to vote for it in campus-based referendums. In fact, students of those days campaigned against paid higher education and won twice. The inability of supporters of the free market model for student unions to convince students of their cause led to lobbying of the government to pass legislation, and these efforts paid off decades later.
What wasn’t possible in the 1970s became possible in the early 2000s due to the rise of study/work arrangements and satellite campuses leading to a weakened ability of student unions to mobilize their members. By 2005, two-thirds of undergraduate students were employed, as education was no longer free. The Australian student demographics have also changed, with 957,176 students in 2005, up from 276,599 students in 1975. As higher education expanded, mobilizing became not impossible, but more difficult.
In Canada in 2026, the voter turnout at student unions continues to decline. Research for the Canadian Student Unions Index has shown the 17% average turnout at undergraduate unions of the U-15 universities. The proportion of students studying part-time reached 27% and those working during their studies hover around 40%. These factors are not necessarily killers of student activism. However, with the decline of student activism, even in provinces such as Quebec, student unions must address the challenge of mobilizing students during what is likely the most difficult period in the student movement’s history.
The vicious cycle of defunding
The 2008 report titled “The Impact of Voluntary Student Unionism on Services, Amenities and Representation for Australian University Students” commissioned by the Minister for Youth contains plenty of nightmare fuel. Universities and student unions reported that the removal of compulsory student fees caused severe funding shortfalls, forcing student organizations to draw down reserves, commercialize services, and rely on transitional university subsidies. The alternatives did not become sustainable. Services most affected included legal and advocacy support, child care, health and counselling, clubs and societies, student newspapers, and sporting programs, with smaller and regional universities suffering the most acute losses. Some universities lost their student unions entirely, and the independence of advocacy services was compromised where universities had to step in as funders.
This was the case study of a structural collapse reinforcing itself. As unions lost funding and services declined, there was even less incentive for the next cohort of students to opt in to paying for those services, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of disengagement. The report was likely a significant influence on Julia Gillard’s Labor government that passed Student Services and Amenities Fee (SSAF) legislation, which partially restored compulsory fees for defined non-political purposes (i.e., student services). The SSAF renewed student life and provided crucial revenue for student unions, but it happaned at the cost of an increased political control over student unions.
Although the money was back in the coffers, SSAF became the sole major funder of student unions, and gave full control over money to universities. Since the implementation of SSAF, one of the principal tasks of every Australian student union’s leadership is to keep a stable relationship with the university, so the flow of funding remains secure. The recent legislation requires universities to allocate a minimum of 40% of SSAF’s revenue to student unions. The compromise, while indicating an improvement, is a far cry from the country that used to have free education and a strong culture of student activism.
In 2019, the cat was out of the bag in Ontario, despite the subsequent court-imposed setbacks for the Ford government. The Australian experience makes clear that once legislation restricting student union funding passes, it is extraordinarily difficult to reverse. Even a sympathetic government in Australia only managed a partial restoration through the SSAF, and that came at the structural cost of routing all funding through university administrations. In Canada, universities collect fees on behalf of student unions without any legislative norms forcing them to do so (except in Quebec), and that status quo persists largely through institutional inertia from the 1960s rather than any active political protection. That could change.
Now what?
The lessons from Australia point to two distinct categories of risk: structural and sociological. The structural risk is about how the policy is implemented. An opt-in requirement would be more damaging than even a poorly designed opt-out system. Student unions need to be prepared to contest specifically this regulatory detail, because the fight for the broader principle of compulsory fees has been lost for the foreseeable future. The sociological risk is harder to address through political organizing alone, because it is about why the policy is being implemented. The declining voter turnout, a more transient and employment-pressured student body, and the erosion of campus culture are trends that weaken unions’ ability to mobilize regardless of the laws. These trends preceded voluntary student unionism in Australia and they are already here in Canada.
The most important preparation student unions can do is to make a case for themselves. It is high time to demonstrate to the students who never vote in union elections, never attend a general meeting, and work while they study, that their union provides something worth paying for. In Australia, that case was not made in time. In Canada, there is still an opportunity, but it is narrowing.
