By: Niveja Assalaarachchi, News Writer
From 11:00 p.m. on December 14 to 4:00 a.m. on December 15, 2025, SFU Canvas experienced a service outage that left students unable to upload assignments or access course materials.
Students took to the r/simonfraser subreddit to express their frustration and anxiety around the situation, given that the outage occurred during final exams and projects. A user who created a thread on the situation said, “This outage directly affected our ability to study and prepare for exams.” They also stated that the incident is “not something students should just be expected to absorb and move on from.”
The user, who said they planned to email SFU about their grievances, also stated the university should take full accountability for the outage. They said it was imperative that SFU implement accommodations for students affected by the incident.
“We pay a lot to be here. Reliable infrastructure during finals should be the bare minimum.”
— Reddit User, r/simonfraser
In a statement to The Peak, SFU noted the outage was “unfortunate,” recognizing the impact it would have on “a student’s ability to submit assessments or otherwise prepare for their examinations.” The university did not mention why the outage occurred. They stated that the outage “was short in duration and impacted a small number of users.”
SFU said instructors were informed about the issue with the platform at the time and were told to help students facing difficulties. In terms of academic concessions, like deadlines, SFU said that “students were instructed to connect with their instructors directly regarding deadlines.”
This is not the first time that SFU’s online services have faced accessibility issues, with an issue affecting students’ ability to enroll in courses through MySchedule in November 2024. They also denied that the issues had any links to the university’s financial situation, which has seen cuts to services. Regarding the MySchedule incident, SFU said it was caused by “an upgrade made to the software by the vendor.”
The university also mentioned that the Canvas outage occurred on the on-premise version of the platform. SFU has since fully moved away from this version in favour of a cloud-based platform, starting from January 1.
