Thank you.
My colleague has just highlighted the key issue: Canadian graduate and post-doctoral awards have not been adequately corrected for inflation since 2003, as we all know.
An increase in tri-agency graduate scholarships and in post-doctoral fellowships is crucially needed to adjust for the 48% inflation that has occurred over this period. Please note we specify that a distinction be made for doctoral awards, as we recommend that PGS D awards be increased to $35,000 to align with the current value of the more prestigious CGS D awards. In addition to this increase in monetary value, an increase in the total number of awards is needed.
Canada’s population of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows has vastly outpaced the number of awards provided. To help address this issue, we recommend that the number of tri-agency graduate student scholarships be increased by 50% and that the number of post-doctoral fellowships be doubled. We appreciate that federal research funding agencies cannot allocate funds they do not possess. Therefore, in line with recommendations from fellow witnesses, and the recent “Report of the Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System”, we strongly recommend that tri-agency funding be increased by 10% every year for five years with funding specifically allocated for graduate student stipends and post-doctoral fellow salaries.
These changes are needed to ensure that Canadians with high research potential are encouraged to receive advanced training and ultimately to explore the job market here in Canada instead of moving abroad where they may be more appropriately compensated.
Thank you for the invitation to speak today. We would be very happy to answer any questions.