Finance committee  Great. Thank you, Chair. I'm very grateful for the invitation to be here today on behalf of the Canadian Association of University Teachers. We represent 72,000 faculty, librarians and professional staff at more than 120 post-secondary institutions in all provinces across the co

Science and Research committee  Sure. There are variations among the provinces. One variable is the level of funding. Obviously, different provinces provide different levels of support for institutions. In those provinces where there's higher public investment, we do see generally lower levels of casualizatio

Science and Research committee  I'd have to take a look at the actual data. I'd be happy to follow up with you on that. I don't have the most recent numbers. Again, it's hard for us to get a clear handle on the actual number of contract staff in each place. We have broad trends, but when you look on an institu

Science and Research committee  Unfortunately, I couldn't answer that. I couldn't even hazard a guess. We obviously have a very international market, but I don't know the numbers for that. I'm sorry.

Science and Research committee  Yes, I think contract academic staff are certainly highly qualified and highly capable of teaching. The challenge they often have is that they're juggling a very high course load, because in order to make a living, they have to take on an enormous amount of work. At UBC, you may

Science and Research committee  About one-third of our membership would be off the tenure track. That's just based on the membership counts that we get. Again, we don't have a really good picture, because the one survey we do of academic staff doesn't include contract academic staff.

Science and Research committee  Not really. I think there are three different kinds of contract academic staff that we want to talk about. There are people who are hired to replace someone who's on a sabbatical. It's a temporary thing, and they know it's a temporary business. There are also professionals, such

Science and Research committee  I think it's hard to really generalize, but sure, I think people graduating with a Ph.D. today are facing a rather uncertain labour market, if they're looking towards universities, because of the increasing casualization of the workforce and the difficulty in getting grants. Gett

Science and Research committee  What has been falling in terms of expenditures by universities is spending on academic-rank salaries. One of the drivers outside of that has been expenditures on contract or non-tenure-track positions. We've seen increases in administrative costs and increases in capital spending

Science and Research committee  Thank you for the question. It's a complicated, complex issue that I think is going to require greater co-operation between the federal government and the provinces. Obviously, labour issues and labour law are a provincial jurisdiction, and the teaching component of education is

Science and Research committee  With regard to bursaries and grants, providing adequate funding is absolutely important, particularly for people in that critical post-doctoral position who are looking for post-doctoral appointments. One of the impacts is that bursaries and grants have not kept pace with the rat

Science and Research committee  That's a good question, because it's hard to choose. Which child do I love more? One of the things we need to look at is the way in which the federal government can provide assistance to universities, colleges, and polytechnics across the country, not just on research but also

Science and Research committee  Good evening, and thank you. I would like to begin by acknowledging that I am joining you this evening from the unceded and traditional territory of the Algonquin people. I’m very grateful for the invitation to be here tonight on behalf of the Canadian Association of Universit