Science and Research committee  I think there's a mix, and it depends of course on each individual person. For some people, wanting to migrate to Canada is definitely part of the reason they apply to Canadian research institutions, whether it's for their research degrees or for their post-doctoral fellowships.

Science and Research committee  Yes. That's correct. For Ph.D. students in Australia, the funding is provided by the federal government. The Ph.D. scholarships are indexed every year. You can look up the historical Ph.D. student stipends on the department of education website. They go back many, many decades. You can see that they've been going up regularly for the whole time.

Science and Research committee  Yes. Thank you for the question. There are a lot of movements in science right now to make data more open, to give transparency and allow other people to check it. For the most part in science, we operate on a trust principle. If a paper is published, the dataset underlying that doesn't actually get reviewed while the paper is reviewed, and that doesn't necessarily get assessed at any time after publication either.

Science and Research committee  Yes, that is exactly what I found. If you do the math on how much a summer scholarship would pay a student and how much we would have them work—and be assured that we work them hard, because we want them to get the best out of their experience—in terms of the pay they would get relative to the effort, it would be at or below the minimum wage.

Science and Research committee  I can only really speak to the Australian aspect of how Canada compares, but I can say that in Australia, for domestic Ph.D. students, there are no tuition fees. There is no question of whether there will be an extra cost imposed on students. For international students, there are fees, but for the majority of students who are studying or completing their Ph.D.s in Australia, my understanding is that they would apply for and usually get an international fee remission scholarship.

Science and Research committee  I believe there are, but I'm not entirely sure of the situation for master's students. I think they might have some similar kinds of scholarships. The master's is a bit more complex, because there are master's by coursework and master's by research, so the variety of degrees on offer is different.

Science and Research committee  I think that there are a few obstacles. I think the biggest one, of course, is job security. It's very difficult to continue through all of your 20s and 30s on one- and two-year contracts, not knowing where you'll be or what you'll be doing in a few years. There's a constant interest in alternative career paths, which can have great benefits for the rest of the economy.

Science and Research committee  I think there are a few things that graduates struggle with in terms of finding jobs after a Ph.D. or other graduate research programs. For example, one is knowing what you can do. I think that, if the federal government were to provide some more support in institutions to provide more career training to graduate students, then they would be better able to identify alternative career paths and see how they can adapt their training during their Ph.D.s or master's to better prepare them for those alternative careers.

Science and Research committee  I don't fully agree that there is a shortage of Ph.D.s. I think there is an oversupply of Ph.D.s, and I think that the difficulty is matching the talent to the jobs. As I said in my opening statement, between 80% to 90% of Ph.D. holders will not find permanent jobs in academia. I think that's partially because the vast majority of people who do Ph.D.s want to find a job in academia.

Science and Research committee  I think it would be hard. In my case, the reason I'm back in Australia is mostly personal. It's to be near family and in my country of birth. I think that a permanent job with good pay would be right up there. I think that's what I have now in Australia. I think a permanent job with good pay and a visa to go with it would be what would drag me back to Canada.

Science and Research committee  I think that the key things to change at a federal level are to improve the availability of funding and to improve the salaries that are offered to post-doctoral fellows. I think that there are also things that can be done around immigration to make, for example, the renewal of a work permit faster and easier.

Science and Research committee  Yes, I think a four-year contract would be fantastic. That would be between double and four times many of the contracts that I had in Canada. It would be competitive with winning fellowships elsewhere. For example, in Australia, a grant might be three years or an investigator award is five, so a four-year contract would be very competitive.

Science and Research committee  Thank you, Madam Chairperson. Good evening and thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. My key message tonight is simple. Researchers might love making discoveries, but the way to attract and retain talented researchers is to improve their pay and working conditions.