Thank you very much.
Dear Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for the invitation to be with you today. I'm speaking to you from Winnipeg, Canada, Treaty 1 land, which is home to many first nations today and the homeland of the Métis nation.
For background, I am a professor of biology at the University of Toronto Mississauga and the Canada research chair in urban environmental science. Today, though, I am speaking to you in my role as chair of the board at Support Our Science, or SOS.
SOS is advocating for higher pay for the nearly 300,000 graduate students and post-doctoral scholars working across Canada from coast to coast to coast. I am speaking to you today because stagnation in funding and inadequate federal financial support for graduate students and post-docs is the most important issue in Canadian research and innovation today.
I'm not going to restate Support Our Science's requests of the government. If you'd like to see them, they were given in the May 9 testimony by Sarah Laframboise, our executive director. I'm happy to put them into context if you have any questions about them.
This is an important issue, because research at university in Canada drives the discovery and innovation of our nation that fuel our economy. The people doing this work are largely graduate students and post-doctoral scholars. It's important to put this into context, because “graduate students” is a bit of a misnomer. They're not really students in the traditional sense that you think of students. They are researchers. Their main job is doing research. Post-doctoral scholars have already earned a Ph.D. They're already among the most highly trained and skilled people in our country. We need these people for Canada to succeed, and we're forcing them into poverty by paying them less than minimum wage. You'll hear about that today from some of the other testimony.
Let me put this into perspective from a personal angle. In 2003 I was a second-year Ph.D. student. The Conservative Party of Canada in that year, when they were in government, had a bold vision to create a highly trained generation of people who would drive our innovation economy. They created the Canada graduate scholarships program for master's and doctoral students. They also increased the value of postgraduate scholarships and increased the value of post-doctoral fellowships.
The following year, in 2004, I was among the very first Ph.D. students to be awarded a Canada graduate scholarship. It was worth $35,000 per year. That money, that investment, was transformative for me. With this money I paid my tuition, my food and my rent. The investment allowed me to focus on research. With this increased focus, I was able to make major discoveries about how plants defend themselves against pest insects. This work has had applications to agriculture, horticulture and conservation. For this work, I won the Governor General's gold medal and several other awards.
This success led to me receiving an NSERC post-doctoral fellowship, which I took to Duke University to learn cutting-edge techniques in molecular biology and genomics. Armed with this new knowledge and these skills, I then started my own laboratory as a professor, eventually at the University of Toronto Mississauga, where I'm training the next generation of scientists, master's and Ph.D. students and post-doctoral scholars, who are making their own discoveries that are contributing to our country and economy.
Now, herein lies the problem. It's been 20 years since I did my Ph.D., and the federal support for graduate and post-doctoral researchers that I received has changed by zero dollars. Imagine if you hadn't received a raise in 20 years. I think most of you would have left your profession by now. That's exactly what's happening. The Canadian research system is in crisis. Our brightest minds in Canada are leaving the country in droves.
In 2019 the McGill TRaCE study discovered that 38% of all freshly minted Ph.D.s in Canada are leaving for other countries where they are better compensated, mainly in Europe and the U.S. That's nearly 3,700 Ph.D.s leaving every year that we've just invested in. That investment was intended to drive our innovation and our economy. When they leave, that's a lost investment. I've estimated that it's worth $740 million every year.
That study was in 2019. The problem is even worse today. Essentially, Canada has become the world leader in training people to leave our nation. That's why increased federal support for graduate students and post-doc students is the most important issue in Canada today.