Thank you, Paul.
As mentioned, my name is Sarah Laframboise. I am a Ph.D. student in biochemistry at the University of Ottawa. I want to thank the members of the committee for having me today. I hope to provide a student perspective on graduate student life and funding.
While pursuing my Ph.D., I've been heavily involved in the science policy landscape, where I was fortunate to meet Paul from the ISSP. I am also a member of the leadership council for the institute. Last year I founded the Ottawa Science Policy Network, where I've been investigating graduate student funding in Canada.
As we heard in the committee already, there are significant challenges to being a graduate student in Canada. Only 33% of graduate students are actually supported directly through tri-council awards from one of the three federal granting agencies. The rest are supported indirectly through stipends provided from their supervisors' research grants or departments. This leaves students vulnerable to financial instability and creates a financial barrier of entry to pursue graduate degrees in science.
In December of last year, we launched a national graduate student finance survey. Over the last four months, I have met with graduate student associations across Canada. We've listened to countless stories of struggles, inequalities and crippling debt. Simply put, graduate students need more support.
It's important to note that these students are young adults, typically between the ages of 20 and 30, who care about things like housing, savings and starting a family. Currently, an average student in Canada makes $19,000 at the masters level and $21,000 at the Ph.D. level. After paying tuition and compulsory fees, this leaves a master's student with about $10,000 and a Ph.D. student with only $12,000 to live off of for the rest of the year. This is hardly enough to pay rent in most major cities in Canada, let alone other necessities like food, transportation or hydro.
These are all aspects of the survey that we wanted to investigate. The survey closed just a few weeks ago, with over 1,300 responses from graduate students across Canada. While the results are still preliminary, I'd like to share some key highlights with you.
We found that almost 45% of students—