STOP THE LEVY!
When you think about how the University of Ottawa Students’ Union (UOSU) spends its budget, what comes to mind? Maybe it’s the health insurance plan that grants every student access to healthcare. Perhaps it’s the Food Bank, which helps students struggling to afford food. It might even be the events that UOSU puts on during 101 Week.
It may come as a surprise that $400,000 of that budget goes towards an external group known as the Ontario Public Interest Research Group, otherwise known as OPIRG. Despite such a high price tag, this group operates completely independently of UOSU, with little to no oversight of how that $400,000 is used, and no indication of what benefit OPIRG provides to U of O students.
According to its own website, OPIRG “is an organization that works on research, education and initiatives which support social, environmental and economic justice.” At first glance, this seems like a reasonable mission, and I would tend to agree that there is in fact a need for initiatives supporting important social causes. However, the lack of oversight on how their enormous budget is spent raises serious concerns.
OPIRG’s most recent annual report indicates that the group received $398,289.98 from student fees for the period of May 2021 to April 2022. The report also lays out the activities it runs with that budget, including a program to promote various social causes, a community garden, and Alt101 Week — OPIRG’s alternative to UOSU’s frosh week, which includes events relating to OPRIG’s social justice theme.
To accomplish these projects and more, OPIRG spent $224,989.07 over the same period. Although I’d argue this price tag seems somewhat high, reasonable people could disagree about it, and I think the bigger problem is this: what happens to the other $181,280.91 which the report lists as “Net Revenue”? Given that OPRIG is a non-profit, why does it have a budget nearly twice as large as it uses?
So why does UOSU give them so much more money than they need? That’s because OPIRG’s funding was established by way of a referendum, meaning that UOSU is contractually obligated to transfer the total of a levy paid by each uOttawa student every year.
Technically, students are allowed to opt out of having to pay the OPIRG levy, essentially getting their portion refunded. However, as OPIRG’s own report shows, not a single refund was made that year. If students were actually aware of OPIRG’s presence on campus, and if the mechanism to opt-out was actually accessible, surely there would be at least a handful of students choosing to take a refund.
There is a referendum on the ballot in the upcoming by-elections which asks if students want to stop the OPIRG levy. I believe that that would be the right decision, given the opaque situation regarding OPIRG’s funding and the lack of clarity as to what benefit they provide to the student body.
I am sure that there will be many students who support OPIRG’s work and wish for it to continue, and to that I would argue that this referendum should still pass because OPIRG is getting an unfair deal. If there are in fact people willing to pay to fund OPIRG, they should donate like they would to any other charity; charities, I might add, that do not have the benefit of $400, 000 of student fees each year.
To me, it is a question of fairness, transparency, and accountability, all of which can be achieved if we vote to stop the OPIRG levy.
