The Canadian STC chapters jointly submitted three vital questions to the candidates in the STC election to gauge their awareness and interest in the issues facing Canadian STC chapters.

Fei Min Lorente, the president of Southwestern Ontario STC has posted a blog entry about the questions and the responses they garnered:

The presidents of the Canadian chapters agreed that it would be helpful to our voting members if we asked the candidates some questions that are relevant to Canadian STC members. The questions were:

• How would you propose to make international chapters like Canada feel more like they are a part of the bigger organization?
• What would you do to convince Canadian members that they should pay the same membership dues as Americans, when many of the STC services do not apply to Canada?
• Are you aware that the International Affiliation Agreement is currently being reworked, and what do you think it should contain?

Continue reading Lorente’s posting at stc-soc.blogspot.com for the full replies to the questions.

STC-Montreal President Everett Larsen said, “STC’s financial crisis during the past year highlighted some real and perceived inequities in chapter funding, both in the US and in Canada. This year saw a significant increase in our dues cost, and all members are understandably re-evaluating the new membership value proposition.”

Larsen said that the key issues facing Canadian chapters include the following:

• STC operates a central job bank, but hardly any job postings are for Canadian positions.
• The Society has been actively lobbying the US Department of Labor to change its official job classifications pertaining to technical communication. This may be of benefit to US members, but has little direct impact on wages and employment in the profession in Canada.
• STC also publishes annual salary survey data, but again it is for the US only. When asked about including Canadian data from Statistics Canada, the STC Office replied that such data was not offered for free and was overpriced.
• STC’s annual conventions are always US-based, and are expensive for Canadians to attend.
• Group health insurance is an offering of great interest to US members, but is not relevant to Canadians.
• STC no longer supports regional representation on its Board of Directors, and when approached, stated they were not interested in having dedicated Canadian representation at board level.

The full replies to these issues from the candidates for the STC board can be found linked on the STC Southwestern Ontario Chapter blog.