Thank you all for being here.
As usual, I have enough questions to spend the entire night here, but we don't have that time.
I'm going to start by trying to pick up on a point that Ms. Diab mentioned a few minutes ago. We've heard a lot about how, at the core of all this, there are people, especially the “new talent”, they call it. These are students, basically, grad students who are entering the research field. We really want to help them grow in their knowledge and we want to keep them here in Canada.
However, what I've been hearing whenever I've talked to researchers and students is that one of the programs that has fallen behind over the last few years is the student scholarships program that the tri-councils administer.
Completely coincidentally, I just came from a meeting with the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations and they had this ask as well. They've looked at what that scholarship program provided at its peak and they said we really should get back to that. They pointed out that it would cost about an additional $120 million each year to get it back to where it was.
Perhaps I can start with Dr. Adem to comment on that. All the councils administer it, but could we start with NSERC and just say where we are with supporting these students? Support for these students is really the basis of all this.