Absolutely. Thank you very much for the question, because it's something that we did put in our brief that Monsieur Blanchette-Joncas made reference to.
You can invest in research in two different ways. Well, you can in many ways, but one is by providing funding to the granting councils, which is obviously one of the great ways. The second way of investing is to invest directly in students through scholarships, graduate scholarships, what we call the CGS, the Canada graduate scholarships program.
You're absolutely right. The number and the value of these scholarships has been stagnant for at least 15 years. We've been advocating for a tripling of the number of graduate student scholarships. This would achieve two things. We're talking about diversity. We're talking about equity, diversity and inclusion a lot, but by investing in graduate students, we can target these graduate scholarships to students in designated groups, number one, but also in disciplines, if you want to go that far. We've certainly advocated for a significant increase in the number and the value.
I'm sure your analysts can provide you with the numbers, but when you look at the investments that are being contemplated in the U.S. right now, it is scary. I've made reference to it in my remarks. We've already seen a bit of an exodus right now. All university presidents can point to one or two individuals who have now been lured to the U.S., to Germany, to the U.K. or to Japan because of the significant investments that are made in the postpandemic era, or at least what we think or hope will be the postpandemic era.
We're at the edge of having a 1990 type of situation. We're not there yet, as I said, but we have to be a lot more aggressive. We have to support investments in graduate students and in the granting councils directly.