Candidate Statement – CUASA President

April 1, 2026

Candidate: Dominique Marshall

To serve and represent CUASA for the last 3 years as President has been a privilege. As I seek a second mandate, I can assure fellow librarians and professors that I will work in solidarity with them towards the ideals of greater “freedom, responsibility and mutual respect” which moved the founders of the union 50 years ago. The working conditions required to meaningfully advance, preserve and share knowledge is what university employers owe to their academic staff in order to provide students and citizens with the higher education they are all entitled to receive.

The responsibility of the President is to coordinate the efforts of CUASA’s team of volunteers and staff, and to renew the trust and stake members have in the association. In the best of circumstances, it means organising, in the words of the Collective Agreement, to “foster and continue the existing harmonious relations within the University community,” or “to provide an amicable means for settling differences which may arise from time to time between the Employer and the employees in the bargaining unit.” But when the indignities of workplace discrimination, censorship, diminishing participation, subjection to private interests, exhaustion, penny pinching, haste and red tape become apparent, it means working with urgency to safeguard the entitlements of union members.

I believe that my knowledge of this campus, my experience in associational life, and my sense of the history of the rights to fair working conditions and to public higher education in Canada prepare me well for the position.