Mike Bosch told us he was afforded the opportunity to run as Barski’s Cabinet’s external candidate because of his ideas. Unfortunately, his actual ideas are either poorly thought out or potentially ineffective, and he has virtually no experience relevant to the job.
Like the other candidates, Bosch easily recognizes there are problems with university funding in Alberta. He, like the rest of Barski’s Cabinet, pointed to Quebec’s heavily subsidized (and therefore lower) in-province tuition at schools like McGill University. (Quebec residents pay significantly lower tuition at Quebec institutions.) He also, like others in his cabinet, pointed to poor handling of federal transfer payments received by the province.
While advocating for a Quebec-like system, he wasn’t concerned that moving to a similar system would place a higher burden on out-of-province students.
To combat provincial spending habits, he would fix internal Students’ Union spending, claiming the Klein government would follow suit. (Although, so far as the committee could recall, the provincial government has never brought up student association spending as a factor for provincial base funding.)
Provincial lobbying would be a priority for Bosch, but he would pull out of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations and potentially pull the SU from federal politics, a particularly troubling move in an election year. He didn’t bring up student involvement at all, neither in favour nor against.
He did recognize the need to use the media, and called for as much media exposure as possible. Still, he all but ignored community involvement. Furthermore, he likely learned about his role on–and perhaps the existence of–the university senate during our interview.
What will be your lobbying priorities?
“CAUS will be our lobbying priority. We don’t feel like anything’s getting done
with the federal situation right now, and we would like to save the SU the money
of lobbying with CASA. We want to start at home.”
How will you determine what students’ issues are?
“We want to have a lot of interaction with students. We plan on being around school
and making our faces known.”
How will you communicate those issues to the outside world?
“We are going to try and get as much media exposure as possible. We’re going to
try and be in contact with all the [media] groups around Calgary.”
What will your role be on the senate?
“I guess my role on the senate will be to use my management skills to bring organized
messages to them.”