Thousands of university students, postdoctoral fellows and researchers from 46 institutions across Canada took to the streets on Monday to demand from the federal government an increase in the value of scholarships and research grants in order to provide a “living wage”. These demonstrations, which took place in all the major university cities of the country, constitute another action of the organization “Support our science”, which multiplied the steps in 2022 with the federal authorities without ever winning.
“For twenty years, the amounts of scholarships and grants from the three federal granting councils — Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research — have not have not been increased, which means that graduate students and postdocs live below the poverty line. If we rely on inflation since 2003, an increase of at least 50% would have to be made to allow them to have a decent salary,” indicated Samy-Jane Tremblay, president of the Union étudiante du Quebec, and organizer of this national event.
“Due to a lack of funding, some students will drop out of school, others will reorient themselves towards something else, still others will decide to pursue their research elsewhere, because in countries like the United States and European countries, the funding is much higher and more attractive than in Canada. The situation is conducive to a brain drain,” she added.
In Montreal, the Support for Science demonstration got under way around 6:30 p.m. with a procession of at least 200 graduate students and professors from McGill, Concordia, University of Montreal, and the National Institute for Scientific Research ( INRS)
Fanny, a French third-year doctoral student at INRS, had to change apartments due to lack of resources. In addition to the 40 to 60 hours a week she devotes to her studies, she is forced to work to support herself. “I had to take a restaurant job on Thursdays, Fridays and weekends to survive,” she says.
But such a schedule “leads to exhaustion and future academic failure because you have to publish a lot to succeed in research,” adds Adeline, a doctoral student at INRS.
“While we are expected to work between 40 and 50 hours a week and often on weekends, we are paid below the precarious threshold, because we have to pay our school fees. This jeopardizes our psychological and even physical health,” points out Mathilde, president of the INRS student federation.
“We have a big disadvantage compared to those who are in the labor market, because, for example, we do not contribute to retirement. When we finish our doctorate, we will be almost 30 years old and we will not have started contributing for our future yet,” adds Regina, also a doctoral student at IRIC.
In Ottawa, between 150 and 200 demonstrators joined Parliament in the early afternoon, where students, Senator Stan Kutcher, as well as MPs Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, from the Bloc Québécois (BQ), and Richard Cannings, from the New Democratic Party spoke. The students underlined how difficult it was to live with the salary offered to them, which has not been indexed since 2003. “Twenty years ago, the minimum wage was $7.30 an hour in Quebec. Today 1er May 2023, it was increased to $15.25. However, in 2023, research students who work full time receive much less than the minimum wage,” noted Samy-Jane Tremblay.
“The whole society will be penalized”
Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, BQ spokesperson for innovation and science, pointed out in an interview with the Duty that Canada is the only G7 country to have reduced its investment in research as a percentage of its GDP over the past twenty years, while in 2022 the United States has committed to doubling its program within five years research funding. “As our competitors invest more, we in Canada are stepping back by maintaining the status quo. Every day, every week, every year that passes, it will be more and more difficult to catch up, because the gap widens. Our talents will go elsewhere and will not return to pass on their knowledge. The whole of society will be penalized,” he points out.
Mr. Blanchette-Joncas tabled a motion in the House of Commons Standing Committee on Research and Science, whose work will begin this week, on the issue of the freeze on graduate scholarships since 2003 and its impact on the student population.
It was the Support Our Science movement that organized this national event which mobilized members of the research community from coast to coast of the country, and more particularly in Quebec City, Sherbrooke, Chicoutimi and Montreal. . This movement was created in 2022 at the initiative of Louis Bernatchez, professor at Laval University, Marc Johnson, from the University of Toronto, and Sally Otto, from the University of British Columbia. The organization of a petition comprising 7,000 signatures from researchers and students, which was delivered to Minister Champagne and Prime Minister Trudeau, encouraged graduate student and postdoctoral associations to join the movement. Demonstrations took place in Toronto in August and Montreal in September, as well as numerous meetings with Canada’s chief science adviser, the presidents of the three granting councils and political advisers in the offices of ministers François- Philippe Champagne and Chrystia Freeland.
Bad target
“We had good stories telling us that we had been heard, that they understood the aberration. We were hopeful that the 2023 budget would include an adjustment to excellence scholarships, but nothing happened. What is incomprehensible is that these adjustments do not require huge amounts of money compared to large research grant programs, such as the Apogee program,” says Bernatchez.
“Major programs like Apogee target specialties in universities, they only subsidize a minority of research teams. With these mega-programs, more traditional programs are abandoned, which reach many more researchers, which ensure the continuity of research already underway and which maintain a certain stability in the laboratories. These big Apogee programs are phagocyting funds that should go for continuity. You have to maintain the right balance between the two types of programs,” he says.
The budget was a great disappointment to students: “In the federal budget, there is only one box on research that mentions the investments that have been made by the federal government in recent years, but we realize that ‘no investment has been made directly for the next generation of scientists. We very briefly mention the Bouchard report, which clearly states that we must invest significantly and massively in research funding,” said Samy-Jane Tremblay.