Tag Archives: Federation for Humanities and Social Science (FHSS)

Support Our Science and the mass student walkout of May 1, 2023

It’s hard to tell how many students and staff participated in yesterday’s (May 1, 2023) Canada-wide walkout. The University of British Columbia (UBC) counted 300 in their walkout (from a May 1, 2023 article by Amir Ali for The Daily Hive). The total number is not available but there is a Nationwide Walkout page on the Support Our Science website with a list of over 30 participating institutions.

I didn’t pay much attention to the concerns from the academic community about the lack of support for Canadian research in my April 24, 2023 posting “The 2023 Canadian federal budget: science & technology of the military and cybersecurity and some closing comments (2 of 2)”; see the”Always a little disappointment” subhead featuring excerpts from a Universities Canada response and Federation for Humanities and Social Sciences briefing on the 2023 federal budget.

Thankfully, others have filled in the gap. Brian Owens wrote an April 28, 2023 article for Nature about the then proposed walkout and the reasons for it, Note: Links have been removed,

“Pay for grad students hasn’t increased in 20 years, while there has been 50% inflation over the same period,” says Sarah Laframboise, a biochemistry PhD student at the University of Ottawa and executive director of Support Our Science, a student-led campaign group that is organizing the walkout.

Scholarships from the federal government provide an annual stipend of Can$17,500 (US$12,800) for master’s degree students, either $23,000 or $35,000 for PhD students, and $45,000 for postdoctoral fellowships. That leaves many researchers in a precarious financial position, says Laframboise. A survey that she and her colleagues conducted of more than 1,000 Canadian graduate students found that almost half of respondents either frequently struggled to make ends meet or were forced to make sacrifices to afford necessities, and 30% had considered leaving their studies because of financial hardship1.

Support our Science has three main demands. First, it wants master’s scholarships to increase in value to $25,900 (a rise of 48%), postdoctoral fellowships to increase to $59,200, and the two levels of PhD scholarship to be equalized at $35,000. Second, it wants a 50% increase in the number of scholarships funded each year, and a doubling in the number of fellowships. Finally, it wants the size of federal research grants to increase by 50%, to allow professors to increase pay for students and postdocs who do not have a federal scholarship. The organization says that these demands are in line with recommendations from the government’s own advisory panel on the research-support system, which published its report in March [2023].

You can find the March 2023 Report of the Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System mentioned in Owens’s article here.

That report and more are mentioned in a March 24, 2023 Support Out Science press release issued in response to the 2023 Canadian federal budget,

Support Our Science (SOS) has worked tirelessly over the last year to advocate for increased funding to graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. We are disappointed that the Government of Canada’s Budget 2023 does not include any new investments for the next generation of research and innovation leaders driving Canada’s economy. We recognize the fiscal challenges our nation is currently facing; however, Budget 2023 will have drastic impacts on current graduate and postdoctoral scholars in Canada and will negatively impact the retention and attraction of top talent for years to come.

Of the G7 nations, Canada already makes among the lowest investments in research, development and training. This is documented in the report by the Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System, the 2017 Fundamental Science Review, and the 2021 Degrees of Success Report by the Canadian Council of Academies. This budget puts Canada even further behind. Our ability to advance green technologies, cybersecurity, quantum technologies, disease prevention, and many other areas of critical and urgent need are being hampered by the Government of Canada’s lack of investment in the next generation of researchers.

A May 1, 2023 article (with files from Mike Crawley, Joel Ballard and Maurice Katz) on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) news website details some of the hardships faced by graduate and postgraduate students, Note: Links have been removed,

A Canada graduate scholarship from one of the three federal research funding agencies is $17,500 per year for a master’s student or $21,000 per year for a doctoral student.

Luis Ramirez, a master’s student at Simon Fraser University (SFU), says the amount he is afforded is barely enough to cover his rent, tuition and food. 

“We’re getting less than $30,000 [per year], even the PhD students.

“We have to pay rent, we have to pay tuition, and we have to pay groceries and clothing and so on. So it’s almost impossible to continue with this. We are on the poverty line right now.” 

UBC graduate student Katrina Bergmann says the low scholarship amounts are “unacceptable.”

“We are the major workforce for Canadian science and innovation,” she said. 

Nancy Forde, a professor at SFU, said federal funding is not meant to make anyone rich but is instead there to ensure researchers can focus on their work without worrying about finances. 

But, she says no one can survive on the amount provided in these scholarship funds, adding that many are using food banks [emphasis mine] to get by. 

“I have students in my own research group who are leaving research because they can’t afford to live,” she said. “They came into the program with savings, and they’ve depleted their savings.”

“Only the privileged can survive.”

In December [2022], Champagne [François-Philippe Champagne, the minister of science, innovation and industry] said he was aware of the call for more funding for graduate researchers and that it would be part of discussions with the finance minister.

“It’s clear that if we want to own the podium, we need to do more to support the researchers, the students and the scientists,” Champagne said.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the federal Science Ministry said it had provided $114 million over five years in the 2019 budget to granting agencies to create 500 master’s scholarships every year, in addition to an $813.6 million increase to student grants in the most recent budget.

The spokesperson did not specifically respond to a question about whether the scholarship amounts would increase. [emphases mins]

It seems students are not the only ones using food banks, from an April 23, 2023 article “UBC staff will no longer be able to access AMS Food Bank due to rising costs” by Nikitha Martins for The Daily Hive,

Kathleen Simpson is a Senior Manager at AMS [Alma Mater Society] and tells Daily Hive the student union’s decision to end support for UBC staff was not one it took lightly.

However, the rising cost of food has driven more people to need support from the AMS food bank and simultaneously made it more expensive to purchase food to operate the food bank.

Last year, the AMS food bank served 7,496 people. By the end of this policy year, the student union expects to help 15,861 people.

“In the last month alone, we saw a 1,000% spike over the previous month, quite unusual, but we are really facing some very high business numbers, and when you combine that with some of the costs of food that have been rising for some of our staple items,” Simpson explained.

AMS has put in a funding request to UBC for $350,000.

“Next year, our cost of groceries alone is projected to cost around $449,000,” Simpson said. “So we’re hoping to hear back… whether or not that full funding will be allocated.”

AMS is asking for nearly double what it received last year from UBC.

I wish them good luck in getting long overdue increases.For the curious, Support Our Science can be found here.