Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It's a pleasure to join you.
Ontario Tech University acknowledges the lands and the people of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation, which is covered under the Williams Treaties, and we're situated on the traditional territory of the Mississaugas, a branch of the greater Anishinabe nation, which includes Algonquin, Ojibwa, Odawa and Potawatomi.
I'm here today to speak to you about an issue that impacts Canadians' competitiveness on the international stage. As you know, we fall behind our peer nations on R and D spend at 1.55% of GDP. The latest OECD average is at 2.7%, the U.S. at 3.45% and Finland at 2.9%. The countries closest to our spend are Estonia and Portugal.
Canada’s peers are recognizing the opportunities of investing in research and have made significant commitments to increase support. As you know, in the United States, the Chips and Science Act includes over $200 million U.S. in new funding for fundamental research.
Without similar ambition, Canada risks falling far behind the OECD average. The government’s own advisory panel concluded that Canada will continue falling behind our peers if we fail to increase core funding for the granting agencies and support our early-career research talent. Canada must step up, show ambition and implement these recommendations from the panel’s excellent work. In Canada, most of that spend is still by government and that tells us some of the issues we have in the private sector in the R and D spend.
At the centre of R and D are people, of course, and highly qualified personnel. These are our doctoral and graduate students. Doctoral fellowships and grad scholarships in general have largely remained stagnant over the last 20 years. For the lucky few students who receive these awards, they have to be topped up with tri-council funding from their supervisors—their principal investigators—but even the tri-council has been frozen. In real dollars, we are losing ground. The value and the numbers of Canada graduate scholarships and doctoral fellowships have not increased in two decades—halving in real value. Addressing the stagnation in scholarship funding is an important pillar in the broader effort to tackle the stagnation of funding for the last 20 years.
Graduate programs in Canadian universities are one of the key pipelines for talent, which is fundamental for economic growth in Canada. Investing in the support of grad students through the Canada graduate scholarships program and the fundamental science research funding provided by the tri-agencies will be critical to retaining talent in Canada and driving innovation. Graduate studies in public universities are a fundamental means by which Canadians invest in themselves. While provincial governments are increasingly subsidizing learning opportunities outside of universities, we build capacity in this country by investing in education. Education is how we transform ourselves and, by extension, the world around us, our nation and the globe. Investing in our public institutions is capacity building and citizenship cultivation.
Inflation, and especially the increase in rental accommodations, has very significantly affected the cost of living for grad students. Tri-council doctoral fellowships, including Canada graduate scholarships, have not increased over the past two decades. Adjusted for inflation, the amount of funding per student from the tri-agencies and the Canada Foundation for Innovation is at the lowest it’s been since 2000 and is set to decline even more drastically as the funding commitment following the Naylor report is now coming to an end. The research granting agencies are the bedrock of our research ecosystem in Canada, as you know, and now is the time to renew the government’s commitment to fundamental research by increasing funding for the granting agencies.
Graduate-level funding is fundamental to recruit and retain high-quality students in Canadian graduate programs, and universities are a catalyst for economic activity, employing nearly 410,000 people and contributing more than $48 billion to Canada’s GDP across the country. Every year, we're conducting research worth more than $16 billion and fostering new and innovative ideas that will help us solve problems for today and, more importantly, for tomorrow, in everything from climate change to pandemics.
Graduate studies are a key element of talent acquisition from around the globe. While Canada’s funding for graduate students has largely remained stagnant, countries such as Finland and many others we've heard about today are subsidizing graduate students with free tuition—until completion of a first master's degree anyway—and funding to ensure their students can focus exclusively on their studies. As you note, more students are now part-time or working in part-time jobs while studying, merely to make ends meet.
Tri-council funds overwhelmingly—an estimated 80%—go ultimately to support students. Increasing tri-council funds overall, for this reason, directly flows to students. The Bouchard report highlighted that it's “critically important” that core funding of the granting councils be increased, which is why we were disappointed that we did not see such funding in the budget of 2023.
Canada must act in the fall economic statement to ensure the welfare of the federal research ecosystem. Without increased funding, more students need to take on additional jobs. The unintended consequences are that it increases the time it takes them to complete the requirements for their degrees and, obviously, the brain drain.
Ontario Tech seeks to democratize graduate education. Historically, graduate studies have been associated with a privileged few—