A long-coming update!
When this petition was launched in October 2025, we called for something very specific: an independent forensic audit of the Kwantlen Student Association and greater accountability for the millions of dollars in mandatory fees collected from KPU students.
That demand is no longer hypothetical.
On March 13, 2026, the B.C. Minister of Finance formally launched an investigation into the Kwantlen Student Association under the Societies Act. The investigation is intended to determine whether there has been misuse of funds or other problematic conduct. While it is underway, a ministerial order prohibits the KSA from disposing of, dealing with, or diminishing the value of its assets except as authorized by the order, while permitting reasonable spending on proper operational expenses.
Then, in May, another major development occurred: Finance Minister Brenda Bailey confirmed that PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) would conduct the forensic audit, with PwC's forensic services team appointed to lead the investigation.
This represents a major step toward the accountability this petition has been calling for.
But an investigation is not a finding of wrongdoing. Allegations remain allegations unless and until the investigation establishes otherwise. What matters now is that these questions are finally being examined independently.
And the work is not finished.
This petition was never solely about discovering what happened at one student association. From the beginning, it also raised a larger structural question: what safeguards should exist when organizations collecting millions of dollars in compulsory student fees fail to govern themselves effectively?
Our petition therefore called not only for a forensic audit of the KSA, but also for stronger transparency and accountability requirements for student unions under B.C.'s legislative framework.
Following the announcement of the provincial investigation, the British Columbia Federation of Students (BCFS) issued a statement supporting the investigation but arguing that situations involving alleged financial mismanagement such as this are “extremely rare in British Columbia.” The BCFS emphasized the democratic processes and financial safeguards that exist within most student unions and argued that government intervention should remain rare.
We agree on an important point: students' unions perform valuable work, and it would be wrong to suggest that every students' union is poorly governed or financially mismanaged.
But it would be equally wrong to treat the problems at the KSA as though serious failures of student-union governance are without precedent.
The KSA is not an isolated Canadian example.
Ryerson University / Toronto Metropolitan University
At Toronto Metropolitan University — formerly Ryerson University — the student union has experienced serious financial controversies on more than one occasion.
In 2019, the university's independent student newspaper, The Eyeopener, obtained financial statements showing substantial expenditures on Ryerson Students' Union credit cards. A student-union director said the statements totalled approximately $250,000, with reported purchases including nightclubs, entertainment venues, Airbnb, clothing and other expenditures.
The controversy became serious enough that Ryerson requested that the student union undertake a forensic audit. The union subsequently retained PwC to conduct a financial review into allegations of financial mismanagement and later filed a police report. No systemic change occured.
Yet the problems did not end there.
In 2023, the renamed Toronto Metropolitan Students' Union filed a $900,000 lawsuit against five former executives from the 2021-22 academic year. The lawsuit alleged fraud, financial mismanagement, breach of fiduciary duty, breach of contract and civil conspiracy, claiming approximately $250,000 in financial losses. Among the allegations were nearly $75,000 withdrawn for Toronto Raptors tickets, payments to third-party vendors without board approval and numerous transactions allegedly lacking appropriate documentation or justification.
Those allegations have not been proven in court.
There is also a noteworthy connection to Kwantlen: current KSA Executive Director Timothii Ragavan is himself a Ryerson alumnus, having graduated from the university with a bachelor's degree in business/managerial economics. There is no suggestion that Ragavan had any involvement whatsoever in the Ryerson Students' Union controversies; the point is simply that the problems now being debated at Kwantlen are not unique to one institution or one student-union environment.
University of Regina
More recently, serious financial and governance concerns emerged at the University of Regina Students' Union (URSU).
After reviewing URSU's 2024 audited financial statements, the University of Regina raised significant concerns about the organization's financial position. The university said it attempted to work with URSU leadership and offered financial and governance assistance, but that recommended steps were not taken.
The university ultimately stated that it had “lost confidence in URSU's ability to serve and represent the University's students” and terminated the agreement under which it collected student-union fees on URSU's behalf, effective August 31, 2025.
Reporting on URSU's finances indicated that its 2024 financial statements showed a $1.25-million deficit, while separate legal disputes involved allegations that hundreds of thousands of dollars in student fees collected for campus organizations had been withheld.
The situation escalated further in September 2025, when the Regina Police Service confirmed that URSU was under investigation regarding the possible misappropriation of funds.
And this is not unprecedented in British Columbia
We do not even need to leave British Columbia to find another example.
In 2017, the UBC Students' Union Okanagan (UBCSUO) dismissed its general manager and began an external accounting review after two consecutive annual deficits exceeding $300,000.
Reporting by The Ubyssey had previously uncovered evidence of financial mismanagement and potential conflicts of interest. The deficits were particularly significant because the union's own bylaws prohibited it from operating at a deficit, and the union had an annual budget of approximately $1.4 million.
These organizations are independent of one another. Their circumstances are different, the allegations involved are different, and it would be irresponsible to suggest that every students' union suffers from the same problems.
But when similar governance failures repeatedly emerge at independent student unions in different provinces, at different universities and under different leadership, we should at least be willing to ask whether the problem is entirely individual — or whether there is also a structural weakness in the system intended to prevent and address these failures.
That distinction matters.
The argument for stronger oversight does not depend on proving that most student unions are mismanaged. Regulation exists precisely for the circumstances in which ordinary internal controls fail. As they have, time and time again.
Students' unions can administer millions of dollars collected through compulsory student fees. They are independent organizations with their own elected leadership, bylaws and internal accountability mechanisms. But when these lax and easily-manipulated mechanisms fail, the examples above demonstrate how serious a situation can become before an external institution, court, police service or provincial government becomes involved.
That is why this campaign has always been about more than the particular individuals currently running the KSA. The issues have been systemic for decades.
Independent financial oversight, accessible financial information, enforceable conflict-of-interest requirements, meaningful consequences for breaches of fiduciary obligations, and effective mechanisms for intervention when internal governance fails do not undermine well-run students' unions.
They protect them.
They protect students from misuse of compulsory fees, and they protect responsible students' unions from having public confidence in the entire sector damaged by organizations that fail to meet those standards.
The question is therefore not whether every students' union is mismanaged.
Clearly, they are not.
The question is whether the regulatory framework is strong enough when one is.
And that brings us back to Kwantlen.
The forensic audit we asked for is now underway. But the next questions are just as important:
- What will PwC find?
- Will the findings be made public?
- What corrective action will follow if wrongdoing or governance failures are identified?
- And, perhaps most importantly, will the Province use what it learns to consider reforms that could prevent another student association from reaching the point where extraordinary government intervention becomes necessary?
To everyone who signed this petition, shared it, spoke publicly, contacted government officials, reported concerns, or simply refused to accept that compulsory student fees should be collected without meaningful accountability: thank you.
This investigation is an important milestone.
But accountability does not end when an audit begins.
Now we need transparency about what it finds... and meaningful reform from whatever lessons emerge.