Edit: Minor image fix
Here at Student Association Press, we’re amenable to using association and union interchangeably. And we hope you’ll indulge us. We’re hoping to do some generation of comparative facts and figures, and there’s just far too many colleges and universities to dig through to research.

To help with this, we think it might be useful to divide student associations into some different sized groups, and while we reserve the right to change it, we are announcing today a 27 member: Super Large Union Group (SLUGs). They’ll form the basis for looking at very large student associations with high theoretical levels of financial resources and complexity. They’ll serve as a good default for statistic generation, albeit one that is geographically non-diverse.

These SLUGs range English and French speaking universities and colleges in either Universities Canada or Colleges and Institutes Canada. There are 27 of these associations and they were chosen due to representing more than 25,000 students, full-time or part-time. While graduate student unions would be included if large enough, they are generally too small unless a student union represents both graduate and undergraduate students.

When we list them below, you’ll notice the exclusion of many provinces and the Quebec CÉGEP system due to the schools being smaller. We hope to introduce you to some of their student associations when we unveil some of our other groups in the future.

We might also end up pulling out SLUG-C and SLUG-U if there are university/college distinctions to be made. Sometimes, data won’t be available and student associations will be excluded from this list for certain articles.

Have we missed a student association covering over 25,000 students? Let us know, we plan on revising as we look more closely at union membership numbers in our research! The 25,000 amount is arbitrary, and it just helps define a reasonable sample size for amateur researchers like us.

Here is our list if you’re interested:

Alberta: Athabasca University Students’ Union, University of Alberta Students’ Union, Students’ Union-University of Calgary

BC Universities: Simon Fraser Student Society, University of the Fraser Valley Student Union Society, Alma Mater Society UBC

BC Colleges: BCIT Student Association

Manitoba: University of Manitoba Students’ Union

Ontario Universities: Queen’s Alma Mater Society, Carleton University Students’ Association, McMaster Students Union, Waterloo Undergraduate Student Association, Central Student Association (Guelph), University of Ottawa Students’ Union, Toronto Metropolitan Students’ Union, University of Toronto Students’ Union, York Federation of Students, University Student Council (Western)

Ontario Colleges: Algonquin Students’ Association, Centennial College Student Association Incorporated, Fanshawe Student Union, Student Association George Brown College, Ignite Student Life (Humber), Georgian College Students’ Association

Quebec: Students’ Society of McGill University, Confédération des associations d’étudiants et d’étudiantes de l’Université Laval, Fédération des associations étudiantes du campus de l’Université de Montréal, Concordia Student Union

L’Université du Québec à Montréal was excluded, as its student associations are not centrally incorporated. The University of Toronto Students’ Union applies only to the St. George Campus, as like L’Université du Québec, it has different student associations at different campuses.