Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and the Standing Committee on Science and Research, for inviting me to give the testimony of my experience as a graduate student in Canada.
I thought it best to begin by addressing how McMaster University recognizes and acknowledges that it is located on the traditional territories of the Mississauga and Haudenosaunee nations and within lands protected by the Dish with One Spoon wampum agreement.
Next, I'd like to open by giving an overview of who I am and what my research is. I'm a Hamilton native currently studying at McMaster University in the engineering physics stream for my Ph.D., specializing in the nuclear stream. I primarily focus on modelling the introduction of small modular reactors into Ontario's energy mix. If you have any questions about this, please let me know. I believe I may have exhausted my partner's patience on the topic of nuclear reactors at home, so it would be best to get it out of my system while I'm here.
With the support of my amazing supervisor, McMaster University, Mitacs and other research funding groups, I've been fortunate enough to have opportunities to collaborate with international professors and pursue my research abroad, such as spending nine weeks in Japan last summer as part of the Mitacs-JSPS Globalink award.
However, while amazing opportunities such as this may exist on the individual level, I have found that graduate funding as a whole is an area worthy of rehabilitation in Canada if we are truly seeking to ground innovation domestically and support a new generation of industry-leading experts.
For almost the entirety of my undergraduate career, I knew that grad school was a route I wanted to follow. That being the case, I still spent the vast majority of the time looking into pursuing my graduate career in the United States rather than Canada, largely due to the immense funding opportunities that exist for both researchers and varsity athletes down south. In the end, though, the opportunity to work with a specific professor at Mac shifted my interest back home. Though I'm happy with my decision today, it has not come without its difficulties.
For example, I recently purchased a very modest home in Hamilton. I am the only one I know, among my peers, who has been capable of doing so, and I could not have done so without my fiancée sharing the financial burden. She is a registered nurse who has also recently rejoined the academic community to obtain her master's as a nurse practitioner. Unfortunately, as is the reality in today's housing market, my fiancée was unable to begin her graduate career until after we successfully secured a home together, as Canadian mortgage insurers do not consider my guaranteed graduate and research scholarships to be counted as consistent income, even when stipulated as such by my issuing university.
Together, with the aid of our respective graduate bursaries and collective funding, as well as all qualified OSAP support, we still would not be able to sustain our current mortgage payments without the part-time jobs we both hold and balance alongside our full-time education. My fiancée continues to work 12-hour shifts as an RN and I operate as a part-time bar manager in Hamilton in order to subsidize the mortgage we otherwise could not afford. Even then, our financial situation, though sustainable, is far from comfortable. I believe this remains a best-case scenario for many graduate students seeking to own their own homes today.
While it may seem obvious that the preferred alternative to this arrangement would be for us to wait until we have finished our respective degrees before purchasing a home, this option is rapidly becoming less and less realistic. Housing prices continue to soar out of reach for my friends who have yet to purchase a house, and rental prices are scarcely easier to manage.
To summarize, while I sincerely appreciate the support I have received from my university and all government funding agencies thus far, I believe this support is quickly becoming insufficient for incoming students. Today, Canadian graduates seem to have to make a decision between pursuing higher education or being able to afford adult life. I feel this dichotomy is nothing short of detrimental to furthering Canadian-led research and innovation. I do not believe we can sustain our graduate programs if we're asking young people to put their lives on hold in order to follow us.
Thank you again to the chair and this committee for the time. I hope my testimony might help in strengthening Canada's commitment to graduate research.