Science and Research Committee on May 16th, 2023

[Dr. Ted Hewitt]

Thank you for your questions.

To answer the first question with regard to the value, for the Canada graduate scholarships, I believe there are about 3,000 master's scholarships and 1,000 doctoral fellowships. Those values were, in accordance with my understanding, set when the program was established and incorporated into the budget. We don't have the ability to increase or decrease those amounts and affect the number.

For the graduate scholarships and post-doctoral fellowships our agency funds—I believe it's the same for CIHR and NSERC, and they can speak for their agencies—it's 500 to 700 of those each year. We determine the value of those. The values largely remain the same because of the conversations we've had periodically about whether we want to increase the value or maintain the number. Frankly, I can tell you that, in the past, we've said, “Look, we really want to get to as many students as we can. Right now, let's just push the number and we'll have to find a way to increase the amounts.”

We took that approach partly because we realized, as my colleagues have said, that this is not the only source of funding available to students. There are provincial bursaries, as well. There is money from donations and the ability to work as a TA or in other types of activities. Sometimes universities can support the students we fund in that way. Sometimes, when we support them, they decide not to allow them access to those funds, in order to spread money around still further to fund more students.

I think that's why, as Dr. Adem suggested earlier, this is a system-wide issue we need to resolve. We need to set the reference rate of pay. I totally agree with this, and I totally agree we need to look seriously at increasing those rates.

Perhaps I'll allow my colleagues to take on the other question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

We have less than a minute for each of your colleagues if you're going to be splitting it.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Sure. One or the other can please go ahead.

[Dr. Michael Strong]

I'm very happy to respond to that. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the question.

Very quickly on that, I would agree with everything that my colleague, Dr. Hewitt, has expressed there.

It is a system-wide issue. I think we do need to set what will be, obviously, a floor for all of these and to recognize there will be some variability that will not only occur geographically—that was already alluded to earlier in one of the questions—but also occur by the nature of the trainees themselves. We do look after a lot of fellowship training programs for individuals who have advanced degrees and who are coming as health professionals, so there's a bit of a difference there in what the funding will look like. That does really control the numbers. At the end of the day, there are only so many dollars.

For us, it is that balance Ted was talking about, but I absolutely agree that we need to grapple with this and to get a floor set as to what's appropriate.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

You have about 45 seconds.

[Dr. Alejandro Adem]

I just want to mention that we also support programs at the colleges and polytechnics. In this year's budget, there was $108 million for that sector. A lot of students benefit from hands-on work experience and academic training, so that's a very important sector to also keep an eye on.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you very much.

With my few seconds left, if there's anything that we missed after this that you think would help us in this study, please, by all means, share it with us.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you.

There are 10 seconds.

I'm interested in the governance and how you work among yourselves. That was mentioned in the Bouchard report. A comment on how you govern yourselves between the agencies would also be something we could receive in writing.

Mr. Blanchette-Joncas, you have six minutes.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I welcome the witnesses joining us as part of our important study.

Dr. Adem, in your remarks, you touted the fact that the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council has increased the duration of its scholarships from two to three years, particularly at the graduate level, that is, at the master's and doctoral levels.

In Canada, is the higher number of graduate scholarships keeping pace with the higher number of students? How does the number of awards offered compare to the number of applications? Do you have data on the percentage of scholarship applications that are approved?

[Dr. Alejandro Adem]

I will yield the floor to my colleague Marc Fortin.

[Dr. Marc Fortin, Vice-President, Research Grants and Scholarships Directorate, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council]

Thank you for the question.

There are two programs: the Canada graduate scholarships master's program and the Canada graduate scholarships doctoral program.

The master's level program is administered by universities. Therefore, we don't have data on the number of applications, the pressure rate, if I may say, or the success rate.

With respect to doctoral level awards, we will gladly provide you with our data on the evolution of the number of applications and the number of awards. I can tell you that the number of awards has essentially remained constant, except for an increase in 2019, as previously mentioned.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you very much, Dr. Fortin.

Dr. Adem, I understand that you don't necessarily have all the data. However, right now, the duration of studies is greater than three years, particularly at the doctoral or master's level. Has your organization ever considered increasing the duration of scholarships?

[Dr. Alejandro Adem]

That's a good question. It's a bit of a paradox when you compare the duration of the awards and the duration of the programs. It's important to think about these kinds of things when developing a strategy related to talent or scholarships.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you very much, Dr. Adem.

Dr. Strong, you spoke about the importance of improving Canadians' health. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research obviously does research and innovates in health care, but personally I would like to talk about student psychological health.

Students today are living on the same budget as their predecessors did in the early 2000s. According to Statistics Canada, a cart of groceries worth $100 in 2003 is worth exactly $150.38 today. Higher tuition fees, gas prices and rental costs must also be considered.

In addition, a 2018 student psychological health survey conducted by the Quebec Student Union found that 58% of Quebec students were experiencing high levels of psychological distress. That's nearly two out of three students. In the general population in Quebec, we're talking about one in five. As you can see, financial insecurity can really have serious consequences.

Do you believe that pushing students into financial insecurity by granting them these scholarships is going to help them and encourage them to do more research?

[Dr. Michael Strong]

Thank you very much, Chair, for the question, and thank you to the member for that.

Clearly, my answer to that would be that we have to have the concern with regard to the health of our students as a paramount objective. A graduate degree, whether it be a Ph.D. or master's, in and of itself is a stressful period of time. It is doing research and working under very difficult conditions sometimes in terms of making sure that their experiments are done. Everything we can do to ensure that the rest of their lives and their well-being are looked after, I think, is our priority. It is part of our responsibility.

As a lab supervisor, I have students in my lab right now where I have concerns. You're right. Financial stability is important, and the ability to go home—many have children; many have families—to ensure they are stable is also important. I agree with your comment. It's important for us to be cognizant of this feature.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you very much, Dr. Strong.

Dr. Adem, you know that the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada embraces the values of fairness, diversity and inclusion. I want to talk to you about inclusion.

Currently, the three federal granting agencies do not have seats reserved for the student population, unlike what Quebec is doing with the Fonds de recherche du Québec intersectoral committee, which advises Quebec's chief scientist, Dr. Rémi Quirion. In Quebec, seats are reserved for the student population so that they can make their views known, because these students are an integral part of the situation.

Why is your organization not drawing inspiration from Quebec to make room for the student population on its board of directors?

[Dr. Alejandro Adem]

Thank you very much for the question.

I'll switch to English for this one.

The committees of our council, our governing council, do have students on them, including the committee on discovery research. For the senior committee, the governance council, these are GIC appointments, and students are possible, I am told, but we have never.... However, we do welcome them. We had a conversation with the student associations, and they asked us if we would welcome their participation, and we, of course, said yes. That's very important for us.

I also want to mention that there is an ongoing study on talent in all the different streams of funding. It's coordinated by the Canada research coordinating committee. My colleague, Marc Fortin, is spearheading many of those efforts. Out of 18 people, seven or so are students. One of the reasons the stipends have not been increased is that the advocacy of the students is not incorporated into the governance councils.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Dr. Adem, as president of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, do you support making room for students on your board of directors?

[Dr. Alejandro Adem]

Yes, totally.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you.

Mr. Cannings, you have six minutes, please.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you, and thank you to the witnesses for being here. It's been very interesting.

I'm going to start with Dr. Adem, because he's here in person, and we also had a chance to have a conversation about this yesterday.

I'm curious about the budgetary process. Budgets are kind of a mystery to me in some ways. Where are the decisions being made about these scholarships and grants amounts? They seem to be the same across the tri-councils, so I'm assuming it's there somewhere. Where would that decision be made to increase the amounts?

[Dr. Alejandro Adem]

We provide information about what the current amounts are, what the pressures are, including international comparators. Upon request from the ministry and others, we dive into crunching the numbers and the modelling as to how much money would be necessary, say, to increase a particular scholarship to a certain level.

That's the kind of process. It's a very iterative process, and at some point, the Ministry of Finance gets involved to understand what the size of the ask would be to do that.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

To make it clear then, you've been pointing this out to the government, I don't know how often, on an annual basis, and it has decided not to do that. Is that what I'm hearing?

[Dr. Alejandro Adem]

We are part of government, so we don't advocate for funding, but we explain to our colleagues what the situation is along with the international comparators. For example, the American National Science Foundation graduate scholarship is worth $37,000 U.S., plus $12,000 for research expenses. That's the main comparator for us.