Thank you for the question.
Before talking about students specifically, I have to explain something. People often forget that any treatment or clinical intervention is the fruit of many years of investment in research. If a medication is used to treat something, if there are digital health applications or questionnaires…. All such treatment or assessment tools had to be validated before being used on patients, and it is through research that those tools are validated.
Someone said that, not long ago, the recommendation was for people to stay in a dark room to recover. Recent research has shown however that people who do that develop symptoms of depression as a result of being isolated and without social interaction. That is detrimental to their recovery. It took years of research and investment to be able to prove that.
I wanted to point that out to remind people that research underlies all clinical initiatives approved by Health Canada.
Now I will talk about students. If they do not have a bursary, they need to work. Most of them no longer live with their parents. Their lives are not necessarily structured and they are in school or in training full time. If they don't have a bursary to rely on, they will have to work, which reduces the time they can spend on research. That also delays their graduation. In many cases, it exhausts them and they can't make adequate progress. So they depend on those bursaries, which in some cases are below the poverty line. The bursaries aren't enough to cover tuition fees and living expenses. The bursary amounts were increased recently, but people must really be given adequate support because they are the ones who are advancing research.