Science and Research Committee on June 15th, 2023

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all of our witnesses for joining us and providing their expert testimony today in this very important study.

On June 6, we had the benefit of having testimony from Dr. Mona Nemer, the chief science adviser. I would like to build a bit on her testimony and get your input.

I'm going to try to struggle with your name, Dr....Steve? Okay.

I want to look at the area of diversity and inclusion, because that comes up quite often in the various studies we do. How would low stipends for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows impact equity, diversity and inclusion within the research community?

[Dr. Steve Hranilovic]

I think it's an important one to address. It links to Chantel Millar's appearance earlier. Those students who have a significant safety net will benefit, and we want to ensure that graduate studies remain universal, merit based and dependent on the quality of the applicant.

I also want to pivot a bit. We've talked a lot about science and engineering, and though I am an engineer myself by training, I want to pivot to the humanities, social sciences, business and the other faculties that we have institutionally. They too do not benefit as much from industrial support, industrial research grants, to enable students to enter.

Again, that is a significant impediment to meeting our EDI objectives and the indigenization of our curricula. These are all objectives that we face; however, sufficient supports need to be made broadly for all graduate students. The STEM fields certainly would benefit from that, and their application can be clear in their linked industries; however, there are links to improving Canadian society and tackling large problems from the humanities and from other disciplines across our institution.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

[Inaudible—Editor] humanities are increasingly even more disadvantaged. I don't believe Mitacs has any involvement with the humanities. Is that right?

[Dr. John Hepburn]

Yes, we do.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Okay.

[Dr. John Hepburn]

About 20% of our projects are social science or humanities based, with social science or humanities students.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

That's great.

Perhaps it's because of my manufacturing background and my familiarity with Mitacs that I realized....

Are there groups getting back to you that are disproportionately affected by low scholarship and fellowship amounts? Do you mean the humanities are, or...?

[Dr. Steve Hranilovic]

Certainly, the complexion of funding varies across the university. As I mentioned, we have created a series of stopgaps in order to ensure students can be funded. In the humanities, those funding sources are not nearly as heavily based on research funding. In fact, they're almost not based on research funding at all. They're based on local supplies and funds that we can provide.

We have bursaries and other supports for identified groups. However, international students remain a key constituency that are not supported. They cannot apply for tri-council funding. They suffer from recent visa-processing difficulties, which have thrown them into limbo from arriving into Canada. They are unable to obtain housing because they cannot obtain a credit check in Canada, and so the burden falls disproportionately on us as an institution to support these international students, who often stay in Canada, as my colleague has said. Eventually, many choose to take a path towards citizenship and contribute to our society for a great many years to come. I think that's a key constituent that we should support.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

We encourage them and attract them, hoping they will stay, so that's an important point.

What factors should be considered when determining the value of scholarships and fellowships for graduate students and post-doctoral students?

You can both answer this if you like.

[Dr. David Novog]

It's important to have a balanced approach that takes equity and inclusivity into it.

I can give a personal story that will help shed light...and it hurts me a bit to say it.

One of my post-doctoral researchers told me, one week before they were giving birth, that they were going to have a child, because the culture they came from was such that it was not something to be celebrated or to bring forward. Through my own experiences, taking parental leave for every single one of my children, and there are three of them.... It's about trying to culturally shift people, so they realize there are opportunities in Canada both to have a balanced life and to get a higher degree.

That part would help a lot with attracting those people to Canada. It would even attract Canadians to stay within the system if they realized that all the benefits they would receive while working and going through parenthood or other life changes are available to them as students, as well.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

That's excellent testimony. Thank you for personalizing that.

Are there tri-council standards or university guidelines to inform supervisors' and principal investigators' decisions regarding compensation of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows on their research teams?

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

You have about 30 seconds.

[Dr. Steve Hranilovic]

Yes, there are institutional minimums.

We have a minimum for Ph.D. support. We have equalized tuition, so international students pay the same tuition as domestic students at the Ph.D. level, recognizing that McMaster is a research-intensive institution. However, funds need to come from somewhere. International master's students then, of course, will often pay disproportionately higher tuition, as a result.

Those are the types of trade-offs that we, as an institution, are making in our severely constrained fiscal environment in order to ensure we meet our research mandate while supporting our graduate students.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you.

We'll now go to Mr. Blanchette-Joncas for six minutes.

I'll remind those of you who are online to select the language of your choice using the globe. If you need English, you can choose the English translation.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I welcome the witnesses who are joining us in this second hour of the meeting.

My first questions will be for Dr. Hepburn.

In your speech, you mentioned that Canada was losing ground in terms of innovation. As you know, without research, there can be no innovation. Without students, there's no research, and thus no innovation. As you also know, Canada is the only G7 country to have lost researchers since 2016.

I'd appreciate it if you could share your experience with that, namely the obvious fact that Canada is falling behind on the Global Innovation Index because there are fewer researchers and less research. The most recent data available to me seems to point to Canada lagging behind in the global race for innovation. We went from 8th place on the Global Innovation Index in 2011 to 18th place in 2017.

What can you tell us about that?

[Dr. John Hepburn]

I can answer you in French, but you'll have to forgive me if I mix some English in with the French. Just like every researcher, I speak Frenglish.

We do indeed have a big problem in Canada. Actually, we have several. Among them, I've already mentioned the dearth of post-graduate students, especially at the doctoral level. It's mainly an industrial problem. There are no jobs for real researchers in Canada. It's a problem with

BERD, or business expenditures on research and development.

The fact is that without industrial and social innovation in health and social enterprises, there won't be any demand for researchers or research fellows, which means we won't participate in progress. If we don't participate in progress at the research level, we won't succeed on the innovation and industrial fronts, and we will lose productivity and opportunities on the social side of things.

I hope I understood your question.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

That's right, Dr. Hepburn. At least that gives us some indications.

I understand that you're saying that we obviously need to encourage investment, in the private sector in particular. I'd like to know what the government can do, in your opinion, to increase innovation.

[Dr. John Hepburn]

We're working closely with the Government of Quebec, which has an innovation strategy. Canada ought to adopt a similar strategy, because it doesn't really have one. It has several programs to promote innovation, but there's no coordination between those programs. That's the first thing.

The second thing is that we absolutely need programs to support true industrial innovation. For example, there's the Industrial Research Assistance Program and the new Canada innovation corporation. That's a possibility. Whatever the case may be, we absolutely need a university research support program. We need to make maximum efforts to support collaboration between businesses and universities.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Dr. Hepburn.

Let's return to the subject of today's meeting, namely the indexation and increase of graduate scholarship programs. As you know, these scholarships haven't been indexed since 2003, so for 20 years now.

Mr. Johnson, chair of the board of the Support Our Science movement, testified before the committee at its last meeting. According to a study he shared with us, 38% of Ph.D.s in Canada leave the country, mainly to go to the United States.

I know you've already stated that there aren't any jobs in industry for Ph.D.s. Beyond that, what are the reasons for them to be leaving the country? What can the government do to ensure that these graduates stay in Canada?

[Dr. John Hepburn]

There are certain things we're doing to keep Ph.D. students in Canada. For example, our data suggests that those who have done Mitacs internships are 60% more likely to remain in Canada. So we absolutely need ways to connect Ph.D. students to the opportunities that exist in Canada. Otherwise, the temptation to cross our southern border will be too great, since salaries and industrial innovation are much greater in the States.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you.

Now, Mr. Cannings, you have six minutes.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you.

I'll start with Dr. Hranilovic. You talked about the overall ecosystem the universities are in right now. It's a difficult one financially for everyone, it seems. You also mentioned tuition. When I worked at UBC, I would travel to research stations in far-flung places, and they always seemed to be full of students from Europe who were on their summer break. Because they didn't need to pay tuition, they didn't need to work between semesters and they were there volunteering.

Today we're talking about the situation in which we aren't providing enough support for graduate students. I think people forget—and I keep trying to remind everyone—that on top of everything else they have to pay for—food, housing and everything—they have to pay tuition.

Now they're faced with a $20,000 stipend or something like that, and they have to pay $10,000 in tuition. I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on why Canada hasn't gone the route of Europe and reduced tuition. In fact, over the last 30 years we've reduced overall federal and provincial support for post-secondary education, which has forced universities to increase tuition.

I know it's a big question, but where would you sit on that in terms of the best strategy for us to maintain students and encourage them to stay here in Canada?

[Dr. Steve Hranilovic]

Thank you very much.

To be clear, from an Ontario context we have not increased tuitions. We have frozen tuitions for a period of time.

I think it's important to start from the reason for doing graduate studies. Yes, these individuals are graduate students. I think Chantel was very, very balanced in her comments. She chose to do graduate studies to gain a durable credential for the rest of her life, a world-class credential. We have to recognize from the outset that graduate students are the engines of research in our educational institutions. They're the engines of innovation. Without post-doctoral fellows, without graduate students, research is not going to happen. There will be no research. There will be no leaders of innovation and research in Canada in the future.

Number one, it's essential that we support graduate students while understanding that they are students. This is not a full-time job. They need to be supported so that they can sustain themselves. It is a full-time course of study. The institution needs to be sustainable at the same time. The balance we have, again, given the limited block funding we have from the province to support only our domestic students.... For clarity, our international students are not supported at all by the province, although they make up the bulk of students in the faculty of engineering, for example. Overall, we have about 27% international students at the institution.

We need to balance those priorities institutionally. We need to charge tuition in order to be sustainable, keep the lights on and keep the institution functioning. We also often give back more than that to our graduate students in terms of stipends and supports for field research and their living expenses, in order to meet the research mandate that we have as an institution.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you.

Dr. Hepburn, you commented in similar ways about the situation. We had the Bouchard report that the government commissioned, which recommended increasing the number of graduate students, scholarships and fellowships and increasing the number of tri-council grants to researchers.

I'm wondering where you sit with that. Do you agree with the Bouchard commission? How do you think the government should act on that?

[Dr. John Hepburn]

I do agree with the Bouchard commission in many ways. It's important to recognize, as was just said, that in some fields, particularly high-demand technical fields, the majority of graduate students, especially at the Ph.D. level, are in fact international students who don't qualify for tri-council scholarships. Even for the Canadian students, though, the majority are paid out of research grants, so obviously, increasing tri-council scholarships....

I mean, it's absurd to me that a highly qualified master's student good enough to get a scholarship gets paid less than minimum wage, but you have to remember that for the majority of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, they're paid out of research grants. You address only part of the problem by increasing these scholarships. We underperform in Ph.D. production. If we don't create jobs for Ph.D.s in Canada and increase the number of Ph.D.s, then we're going to continue falling behind in innovation.