Science and Research Committee on June 15th, 2023

[Dr. Padmapriya Muralidharan]

I can definitely answer that question based on my personal experience as well, because I did my Ph.D. or grad school in Australia. The system there is very clear. You have a table for your salary of whatever education you have, and your salary is always matched to the current inflation level every year.

I wanted to get a lot of experience, and that's why I moved to different countries. I wanted to come to Canada to improve my research skill set.

When post-docs outside of Canada look to Canada for their post-doctoral career, I feel at the moment there is a bit of sad news for them. When they see such a low pay scale for fellowships provided by the universities or by the federal funding agencies, it really disappoints them, because either they think that—

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

I'm sorry, but we have gone over the time. I was wanting to get as much in as we could. Thank you for that.

Thank you to the witnesses for joining us. Thank you to Chantel Millar and Priya Muralidharan for your testimonies and participation in relation to this study on the Government of Canada's graduate scholarship and post-doctoral fellowship programs. If there is any information that you'd like to submit, please do so in writing and get that to the clerk.

We will be suspending. For the members who are online, please stay online so that we can start getting ready for our second round.

We have four witnesses in the next panel, two of whom who will be online. We will get them teed up quickly and we'll come back soon.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Welcome back. We have a busy 55 minutes ahead of us.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(i) and the motion adopted by the committee on Tuesday, February 14, 2023, the committee resumes its study of the Government of Canada's graduate scholarship and post-doctoral fellowship programs.

It's now my pleasure to welcome Saman Sadeghi, associate professor of chemistry and chemical biology, who is appearing via video conference as an individual. We have John Hepburn, chief executive officer of Mitacs, also here virtually. In the room, so far, we have Dr. Hranilovic, from McMaster University, vice-provost and dean of graduate studies.

I think we'll start off with Mr. Sadeghi, as an individual.

The floor is yours, if you want to go off mute. You have five minutes.

[Dr. Saman Sadeghi, Associate Professor, Chemistry and Chemical Biology, As an Individual]

Thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate the opportunity to address the committee.

I'm an associate professor in the department of chemistry and chemical biology at McMaster University, and I also hold an adjunct faculty membership at UCLA in the U.S.

About 20 years ago, while doing my Ph.D. at U of T, I was one of the recipients of the NSERC PGS D scholarship, which, at the time, actually made a big difference in my standard of living. I think by now you've heard from multiple sources that, despite significant increases in the cost of living across cities in Canada, the monetary value of scholarships like the NSERC PGS D really hasn't changed since I received the scholarship 20 years ago.

Going beyond scholarships, increasing minimum graduate stipends is essential to ensure that lower-income students can afford the current cost of living. This is particularly true in bigger cities. It enables students to pursue advanced education. Each institution should adjust graduate and post-doc stipends based on the local living-wage salary. A much-needed, across-the-board increase in minimum stipends will foster equal opportunities and diversity in academia. Federal support for stipends that are in line with a living-wage salary and better child care reimbursement will help our universities stay competitive with leading research institutions in the U.S. and industry, in order to retain talent in Canada. To provide a specific example, the graduate program I participate in at UCLA has a $40,000 U.S. stipend for 2023, and it is proposed that this be increased to about $42,500 in 2024.

Removing financial barriers is also important to make graduate school accessible to a broader range of students, promoting inclusivity and preventing graduate education from being limited to just those students with greater financial means.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you.

Have you finished?

[Dr. Saman Sadeghi]

I'll stop there, yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you very much.

Now, we have joining us Dr. David Novog from McMaster University. He's a professor in the department of engineering physics.

Welcome to the committee. You have five minutes.

[Dr. David Novog, Professor, Department of Engineering Physics, McMaster University, As an Individual]

Thank you very much. Good afternoon.

I apologize for arriving late. My flight was delayed.

It's my pleasure to address this distinguished committee and provide my personal insights on the issue of graduate student scholarship and post-doctoral fellow funding.

I obtained my Ph.D. in a non-standard route, where the bulk of my work was complete. I spent a year in Japan towards the end and another year at Ontario Hydro. Before moving to McMaster, I worked in a series of utilities in the nuclear industry.

I've been a professor in engineering for 17 years, specializing in nuclear energy and safety. During this period I've graduated or supervised a total of 23 Ph.D. students, 32 master's students and nine post-doctoral fellows. It's not the number of which I am proud; it's the large impact these students have in industry, in research and beyond. It's the joy of my career.

I strive to ensure that my current students have the same access to mobility funding and advanced training that I had years ago. I would like to discuss some of those specific challenges today.

Firstly, a typical engineering graduate student receives funding that is a mix of university or provincial funding, teaching assistant income and scholarships provided by the supervising faculty. Supplemental student-specific funding may be awarded from federal agencies, such as NSERC, or the private sector. In my experience, some students have had access to funds in excess of $55,000 per year at the Ph.D. level, or as little as $20,000 to $25,000. This low-end salary corresponds to an excellent student living below the poverty line, and this is true in many jurisdictions.

While some diversity of funding is expected, and exceptional talent should be rewarded, this level of discrepancy needs further examination. A system that had the flexibility to expand the number of students accessing funding in this lower-income category would do a lot towards maintaining graduate scholarship in Canada.

Second, there's also a need to address the diversity of students at this level. Not all have the privileges and opportunities I encountered in my studies. There is a need to ensure proper support for those with partners, children, dependents or cohabiting family members, and also to ensure funding for those who have challenges related to their mobility or learning. Additional funding supplements for students in these categories should be considered.

Finally, in building upon these previous topics, in many scientific and engineering disciplines we are experiencing an issue in attracting top talent to stay for these advanced degrees. While I receive many applications per week, not all are qualified, and most are not from Canadian universities. Total stipends and an attractive labour market limit the applications we get from Canadian students to very few.

Certainly a more sustainable and equitable scholarship program that is accessible by a larger cohort would have some impact there. However, one unique aspect I'd like to address is perhaps consideration of an international exchange program beyond what is currently available. For example, my program receives many more international research exchange students at the graduate level from France than we send there. This is simply because there's established and easily accessible federal and local funding in France for students in advanced degrees to have mobility elsewhere in the world. Such a system would attract students with global research interests and would provide additional incentive for them to attend graduate studies.

In conclusion, our goal should be to build an accessible and flexible funding system that can accommodate the diversity in student backgrounds, the increased value of international mobility and the increased economic pressures from tuition and cost of living.

Thank you very much for the invitation to speak. Again, I apologize for my lateness today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

You had a bit of stress getting here, but we're glad you were able to make it. Thank you.

Now we'll move to John Hepburn, the CEO of Mitacs.

You have five minutes, please.

[Dr. John Hepburn, Chief Executive Officer, Mitacs]

Thank you for the opportunity to address this important topic. My remarks are going to take us in a slightly different direction, but they are consistent with those of the two previous witnesses and others.

I am John Hepburn. I'm the CEO of Mitacs. We're a large, national not-for-profit, supported by the federal government, all 10 provinces and industry.

Our mission is to strengthen innovation in Canada, both social and industrial. We do this through talent.

In the past, I was a university professor of chemistry and physics at both the University of Waterloo and the University of British Columbia for more than three decades. I was a dean of science and a vice-president at UBC, so I'm very aware of the pressures on graduate students and research in Canada.

In my current role, we work with universities and colleges across Canada and internationally—we have international programs—as everything we do revolves around students and post-docs. Briefly put, we foster and support partnerships between post-secondary institutions and industry, social enterprises, municipalities and hospitals.

Partnerships are generally applied research projects, where the research is carried out by students and post-doctoral fellows who divide their time between the university and the non-academic partner. The research project is part of the student's academic research work—a thesis, in the case of most of the graduate students—but it's defined by the non-academic partner's needs, as they pay half the cost. That's the industry support we get. Students and post-docs are paid, of course. Our rate of pay is typically much higher than a typical tri-council scholarship, but below the industrial rate.

We report our activities in terms of four-month units of work, which we call internships or stages, and a student can do several of these in a row—obviously, for a Ph.D. student, that's necessary. It depends on the project. Last year, we funded 21,500 of these internships, benefiting about 7,000 students, so we're large.

We have very close relationships with our non-academic, typically industrial clients, and we hear constantly that appropriately trained talent is in short supply, especially in emerging fields such as quantum technology. This arises from a few challenges. In highly sought-after fields, such as computer science or many engineering fields, the incentive to do graduate work is limited. Why work for less than minimum wage for five years to get a Ph.D. when you can earn a great salary right after your undergraduate degree?

If you do the hard work of getting a master's or doctoral degree, demand for Ph.D.s in Canada is low because of our, frankly, woeful industrial innovation. We have one of the worst records in the OECD.

Of course, innovative American firms recognize the value of Canadian talent, and are very willing to pay much higher salaries than Canadian firms. The end result is that while Canada has a very high participation rate in post-secondary education and a pretty good participation rate in universities, our production of doctoral degrees is well below that of other rich countries, especially in high-demand fields.

While some of these issues are not being investigated in this meeting, it is worth noting that if Canada cannot improve innovation, be it industrial or in health care, our future prosperity is in peril. As I understand it, you are investigating the impact of inadequate funding of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows. This is a critical issue, but it is only part of a larger problem in Canada, as I have already mentioned.

In most fields, graduate students and post-docs are the driving force of the research enterprise. When I was an academic scientist, I supervised many students and post-docs, and the bulk of my research output—virtually all of it—was due to their hard work. It is hard work. It's more than full time. If the best students can do their work at an American university—we've already heard this—and get a stipend that is much higher than what they will get in Canada, why would they stay in Canada? Once they go south of the border, they may not come back.

In most engineering fields, especially electrical and computer engineering, often the majority of Ph.D. students are international students. Sometimes they are the vast majority. That is not a bad thing, but it reflects on the attractiveness of graduate work for Canadian students and permanent residents who have other choices. If this supply of foreign graduate students were to dry up, we'd be in even worse shape than we are in now.

Of course, the very best foreign students, such as Indian Institutes of Technology graduates, never come to Canada. That's largely because of our low stipends.

Finally, I must address the quality of graduate education. While universities in Canada provide excellent research training for graduate students and post-docs, there is a need to do a better job of incorporating non-academic training into their studies, given that the majority of graduates at the Ph.D. level will find jobs outside of academia. It is not the job of universities to provide this professional training, as they do not have the expertise to provide it. Stronger participation with non-academic partners is needed, as they can help provide students with a decent wage while they study.

The students from such a training partnership will gain the excellent research training that universities provide, and provide right now, plus the professional training best provided outside the universities.

This is absolutely not to imply that better government support of graduate students is not necessary, but the support can be provided through many channels: improved scholarships, increased research funding—which is critical for most students—and better support for partnership training.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you, Dr. Hepburn, for your testimony.

Now we go over to Dr. Hranilovic from McMaster University, for five minutes.

Go ahead, please.

[Dr. Steve Hranilovic, Vice-Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies, McMaster University]

Thank you, Chair.

I appreciate being given the opportunity, on behalf of McMaster University, to present today and to offer the broader institutional perspective of the university.

I'm very pleased to be joined by some of my faculty colleagues here today and especially by a grad student, whom you heard in the last panel, Chantel Millar. They have all brought their unique and individual perspectives to the discussion.

Graduate student funding is a challenge for McMaster and its students, along with universities across the higher educational sector. At the outset I'd like to underscore that McMaster shares the views of the organizations that have presented to you already, particularly the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies, whose president made important points about additional funding being needed for federal research granting agencies and for increases to graduate student and post-doctoral scholarships.

I'd especially like to underscore the importance of the government's advisory panel on the federal research support system and how disappointing it is that its key recommendations have not been acted on to date. We remain hopeful.

In terms of how the current environment is impacting McMaster and how we as an institution are managing these challenges, the response is multi-layered, and I will provide a brief introduction and welcome further questions the committee may have.

In February of this year, McMaster struck a task force specific to graduate funding, which is presently hosting campus-wide consultations on the impact of the current funding environment and ways in which the institution can help manage those challenges. Thus far, those consultations have yielded some key themes, including financial hardship—which is no surprise given today's inflationary environment—challenges with availability of information, additional barriers faced particularly by international students, and challenges raised to provincially imposed Ph.D. timelines.

On the point of the province and its requirements, it also bears mentioning that McMaster, as an Ontario-based university, is having to manage the unique landscape of how our provincial government is administering its post-secondary system, which is adding to the already substantial challenge of federal funding.

For example, and as the committee no doubt has heard before, tuition rates in Ontario were rolled back by 10% in 2019 and have been frozen since. When that is coupled with the freezing of our provincial operating grants since 2016 and federal grants for master's and Ph.D. students not having increased since 2003, one starts to see a very depressing picture for the state of post-secondary funding in Canada.

On this it bears highlighting that there has for some time been a disconnect between government priorities and the fiscal realities faced by institutions. For example, in terms of global competitiveness, Ontario universities' offers are insufficient to attract top talent. Top U.S. schools will often waive tuition for excellent graduate students, while European universities can typically charge no tuition at all. Adding to this that our national economic strategy relies so heavily on new Canadians to fuel continued growth, one can appreciate the mismatch.

From the consultations McMaster has had with its community to date, it is clear that some actions can be taken at an institutional level to help manage the current state of affairs.

First, we can remove limitations for students who want and need more on-campus employment. We can increase awareness of emergency bursary funds and help ensure that our communications, for example in our letters of offer, help students better understand what funding options and resources are available. We can also look to specific faculties to close the timing gaps to better meet provincial requirements.

I want to emphasize that these measures are stopgap measures at best and are frankly ways in which our institution is only managing a situation that is having a profoundly negative impact on post-secondary research across Canada.

I'll pause now and would welcome the opportunity to answer any questions from the committee on any points we've raised or any other points of interest.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you very much. McMaster certainly has been well represented in this study.

Looking at the time and because we've had some suspensions in the first round, we'll go through two rounds: four of six minutes and then five, five, two and a half and two and a half, and that will take us up to about 1:10, just to let the committee know that's the plan.

First of all we'll go over to Mr. Tochor for six minutes.

Go ahead, please.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Thank you, Chair.

I'm going to carry on with McMaster, and I'd like to thank both of you guys for being here.

Steve, you talked about the inflationary crisis we're in right now. Regardless of the funding you're receiving, what we've heard from many institutions is that inflation in many different ways has impacted your ability to provide high-quality education.

Can you unpack some of the ways in which inflation has challenged you in your college?

[Dr. Steve Hranilovic]

Thank you.

I want to set the stage. My context is Ontario universities. Ontario universities are facing unique pressures. There is one institution in Ontario that has gone bankrupt, and others are facing structural deficits. I'm happy to say that McMaster is not one of those universities. We have a balanced budget.

We are not immune, as an institution, to inflation. However, our graduate students are particularly susceptible to inflation, given the precarious nature of housing and the financial support that they have.

You heard from Chantel and some of our students, who are fortunate to have local safety nets or local structures for support in Canada and can rely on them.

I also want to reference that we have international students. The students who travel from other parts of Canada do not have local safety nets and are drastically impacted by the level of funding that we, as an institution, can support while maintaining financial stewardship to ensure we are a sustainable institution.

The pressures that our students face are not unique. You have certainly heard about them here. They centre around housing, as many constituencies across our nation face. They centre around precarity of work. Graduate students are not employed at the university; they are students at our institutions, but they often need to work. The issue of balancing research, which they're passionate about—which is the reason they've come, to earn that credential—with the need to work, inside the university and outside of the university, to sustain themselves, is a pressure they're facing now more than ever because of inflation and our economic situation.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

On the housing side, nationally, rents and mortgage payments have doubled. For McMaster and that region, has it more than doubled?

[Dr. Steve Hranilovic]

Hamilton is not immune to the housing price increase. I can tell you that McMaster has been proactive. We've been lucky to have started construction of a graduate student residence near our campus. It's a 644-bed residence. That's not to say that it is inexpensive. It is below market rates, but market rates have increased as well.

The lack of housing that is affordable and high quality...I want to emphasize that as well. Some of our graduate students are living in precarious housing situations, and that is not ideal. We work, as an institution, to ensure that emergency bursaries and supports are available. However, the need certainly outstrips the supply.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Thank you very much for that.

Moving online to Mr. Hepburn, I understand that you have facilities in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. Are there any plans to have a regional hub in the Prairies, by chance?

[Dr. John Hepburn]

Of course, we're all working remotely, so offices have become irrelevant. We have people from coast to coast. We have business development advisers—110 of them—from St. John's to Victoria. We have about 25 people who work from Alberta, either Calgary or Edmonton. We don't have formal offices there. We're saving taxpayers' dollars by not paying rent. A lot of our advisers and people work out of university offices that are given to us.

We have a presence across the country. The offices are just the ones we pay rent for.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Thank you.

Staying online, I'm going to butcher the professor's last name, and correct me when you have the floor, but is it Sa-dee-kia?

You talked about the standard of living of students and how it has been negatively impacted. Have you seen a change in the standard of living in the last eight years with your students?

[Dr. Saman Sadeghi]

Absolutely. I appreciate the effort in the pronunciation.

I've been back in Canada for about the last three years or so. I was in California for about 10 years before coming back, and I'm glad to be back home.

It has changed. I have been in touch with students over the past few years, and significantly, I would say, it has changed. As has been pointed out by all of the witnesses here, inflation and the cost of living have more than doubled over the last 10 years, while graduate scholarships and stipends haven't.

We are supported by Mitacs. I want to acknowledge and appreciate that this makes a huge difference in the standard of living for our students. It's a hugely attractive factor for bringing students into our universities and retaining talent in Canada. That's appreciated. Programs like that are important.

I also want to emphasize that we don't necessarily need to compete with industrial salaries. They're inevitably going to be higher all the time. Graduate students and post-docs are trainees, at the end of the day. They're passionate about their research. They're sacrificing their time and ability to make more money in industry to pursue their further education.

What we do need to do, though, is to provide a minimum stipend, so they don't fall below the poverty line, which is, unfortunately, somewhat the case for many of our trainees at the moment.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Thank you very much.

I have one last question for David, and I'll ask for a written response.

Thank you again for being at the committee. Thank you for the testimony on the SMRs.

Of the students you outlined, Ph.D.s and master's students, could you return to the committee in written form how many of those students are working in their field in Canada? I'm assuming that they'd be mostly in nuclear.

[Dr. David Novog]

All but three are working in the nuclear field in Canada, and those three are actually in artificial intelligence and got much higher-paying jobs working for banks.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you for getting the question answered quickly. If there is further detail, you can provide it in writing.

Now we'll go to Valerie Bradford from the Liberals for six minutes.