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.