Yes. Every Ph.D. student in the country ends up doing years of research and training. On average, it's 5.75 years that a Ph.D. student works to become an expert in their field. We invest a lot in that. On average, that's $35,000 a year that we're investing in them to become some of the best scientists, social scientists, engineers and nuclear physicists, as we were hearing from the other witness.
The intention of that investment, as I understand it, is that it's going to benefit our economy for years to come. I see it as problematic that four years ago, before everything went crazy with inflation and the pandemic, 38% of all Ph.D.s were immediately leaving the country—and most of them not coming back—because they could not get adequate support here in Canada. In 2019, that was costing our economy $740 million per year. Today, with inflation, that number is going to be much higher. There's been no other study since then. It's almost certainly over one billion dollars a year today.
For example, from my own lab, of the last four Ph.D. students, three have gone to the U.S., and there's no hope of bringing them back at this point because they're making much more money. In the U.S., for example, the equivalent of our scholarship for a Ph.D. student is $65,000 Canadian in the U.S. We're offering $45,000 here. For post-docs, it's $95,000 a year Canadian in the U.S. for the equivalent of what we're offering here, which is $45,000.
There's just a huge discrepancy right now. When my daughter, who's going into university right now, thinks of doing graduate school because she wants to be a physicist, I will tell her to study elsewhere unless things change here in Canada.