Absolutely. Thank you for this question.
It was actually part of the summary of my talk, but I didn't want to go over five minutes, so I'll take advantage of this question to go through that.
There are five top ways, we believe, to help retain post-docs as a top talent group of Canadians or immigrants in Canada. Number one is to increase average post-doc salaries, as we just talked about.
Number two is to universally recognize post-docs as professional researchers, not as students or trainees. The fact is that doing that affects the immigration process. There are a lot of benefits they cannot take advantage of.
Number three is to ensure that post-docs have access to critical protections like CPP and employment insurance as well as workplace benefits like health insurance. Eighteen per cent of the post-docs in our survey indicated that they didn't even have access to provincial health care, which is very concerning.
Number four is to harmonize legislation pertaining to post-docs at the federal level in such sectors as immigration, employment and taxation. I know a post-doc who was earning $50,000 in a fellowship. Because that wasn't his salary or it wasn't something that we considered one, there was no record of it as such that a bank could accept.
Number five is to increase federal spending in research, specifically for early-career researchers like post-docs who are at the cutting edge of their field, which will increase opportunities for innovation in academic settings.