‘The future of science in Canada is at risk’: researchers ask for a salary increase

OTTAWA – In a lab at the University of Ottawa, Sarah Laframboise hopes to advance cancer research by studying a gene that causes the disease in humans. Her research works with a “model organism”: tiny fungi that have a surprising amount in common with us.

“Yeast and humans share about 20 to 30 percent of the same genes,” he said. “The goal of that is really to find underlying mechanisms that cause different disease states.”

The 27-year-old has always dreamed of being a scientist. After a decade in college, he is almost done with his Ph.D. and has racked up about $100,000 in student debt.

“I have often worked many jobs at once just to make ends meet,” he said. “When I started my master’s degree, I had to take out additional loans because then you are not allowed to work outside the lab.”

Money for research students in Canada comes primarily from scholarships and fellowships from the three federal grant agencies: Social Sciencess and Humanities Research Council, the Natural Sciencess and Engineering Research Council and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

But the prizes have not increased in years. Laframboise earned $21,000 a year until last year, when he earned a scholarship from the Natural Sciencess and the Engineering Research Council for $35,000.

she is not alone – money has become a central theme for the campus group she leads, called Ottawa Sciences Policy Network.

The group says many scholarships amount to less than minimum wage.

They also say that graduate students have not seen a raise since 2003, and postdoctoral fellows have only seen a 12.5 percent pay rise in those 19 years.

That’s the reason for an online petition calling for raises from the federal government. It has more than 1,000 signatures and will be presented to Parliament in the autumn.

At a rally on Parliament Hill on Thursday, dozens of researchers carried an open letter signed by thousands of their colleagues, printed on sheets of paper stitched together to make a 200-foot-long train, to symbolically introduce Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Sciences and the Minister of Innovation, Francois-Philippe Champagne.

they are asking for a prize money amounts will be increased by 48 percent to match inflation since 2003, and will be indexed for inflation to keep up. They also want the government to create 50 percent more graduate and postdoctoral scholarships.

Jeanette Whitton, associate professor of botany at the University of British Columbia and president-elect of the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution, said she benefited from financial support as a scientist early in her career, but in today’s financial realities “I don’t think she could have achieved it.

“I am concerned, because never before have graduate students and postdoctoral researchers been so financially strained that their future careers were at risk. And this means the future of Sciences in Canada it is at risk.”

Champagne was not available for an interview. In an emailed statement, a spokeswoman for her office said the value of postdoctoral fellowships has increased to $45,000 a year.

Asked to respond to the group’s surge requests, Laurie Bouchard said the government “will continue to work with (the research community) to explore ways in which we can continue to support our next generation of researchers.”

“We’re going to lose highly trained people elsewhere who are paying them,” Laframboise said. “I have no aspirations to stay in the academy, but if I did, it wouldn’t be in Canada.”

A House of Commons Sciences and the research committee report released in June recommends creating more scholarships and scholarships, giving researchers a 25 percent raise, and indexing scholarship amounts to the consumer price index.

He also urged the government to review and increase its money of the three awarding councils and find ways to improve the continuity of money provide researchers.

The committee said it heard from Universities Canada that doubling the number of awards available and increasing their value by a quarter would cost an estimated $770 million over five years.

“A lot of people my age are thinking about starting a family, getting married, buying a house,” Laframboise said.

“My younger brother is doing his apprenticeship in trades. He is 20 years old and has much more savings than I can imagine having. So I think that just gives a very good example of the disparity.”

This report from The Canadian Press was first published on August 11, 2022.