PhDs and postdocs in Canada will receive huge pay raises, but many will not.

After two decades of stagnation, the Canadian government will invest heavily in graduate students and postdocs. Its 2024 budget proposal, unveiled on 16 April, increases stipends by C$825 million (£481 million) over five years to encourage next-generation academics. Only graduates who receive rare Tri-Council grants would see the pay increase, but it is envisaged that others will need to compete.

The proposal, which must be approved by the House of Commons, would provide approximately C$200 million per year, boosting master’s and PhD scholarships to $27,000 and $40,000, and postdoctoral fellowships to $70,000. The budget needs backing from at least one of three parties other than the Liberals to pass.

The anticipated raises are huge. Most Canadian master’s students receive C$17,500, PhDs C$24,000, and postdocs C$45,000 annually. The government proposes C$1.8 billion to Canadian funding organizations over five years to improve core research award funding.

The budget boost is intended to increase government research scholarships and fellowships, benefiting 1720 more graduate students or fellows year.

For almost 20 years, Canadian graduate student and postdoc compensation has stayed steady. According to a national study by the Ottawa Science Policy Network last year, nearly 90% of graduate students felt concerned and apprehensive about their money, and almost one-third pondered leaving academia owing to financial demands.

‘These fellowships had the same value for many years, which implies their ability to assist students had, in many cases, gone below a livable amount,’ says McGill University chemistry professor Bruce Arndtsen. Many departments and organizations have to add research funds to these fellowships to reach our usual stipend.

Most chemistry grads cannot be promoted.
Arndtsen adds that a considerable increase to graduate student stipends in Canada will help Canada retain great students. ‘It will also allow grant funds to better assist their research efforts rather than topping up their fellowship.’

He stresses that these stipend increases will only apply to a limited handful who obtain Tri-Council scholarships, as most Canadian chemistry graduate students receive research funds. Arndtsen says that the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s primary chemistry funding program has likewise stagnated for decades and hopes to expand it soon.

McGill sixth-year PhD chemistry student Anne Labarre, who studies computational drug development, welcomed the government’s initiative. Labarre says her chemistry department’s PhD stipends are now roughly C$26,000 per year, which is considerable given Montreal’s recent inflation and rent rises.

Bar raised
Matthew Berg, who earned a PhD in biochemistry from Western University in Canada in 2021 and is now a postdoc at the University of Washington, is optimistic. He said, ‘These increases are going to set the benchmark for where funding should be for trainees in the sciences and in graduate school. ‘Right now, a lot of Canadian graduate students struggle,’ Berg says. ‘We’ve heard examples of students using food banks and other support systems to graduate.’

Last year, Canadian students and academics staged a statewide strike to seek more federal support for graduate students and postdocs. Western University graduate teaching assistants struck last month over unfair compensation. After striking over compensation since late February, a union representing York University in Toronto teaching assistants and graduate workers appeared to have achieved a provisional compromise on 14 April.

Berg says he was lucky to obtain one of the rare federal PhD prizes worth C$35,000 each year for three years. Berg says he gets a stipend of over C$90,000 as a US postdoc.

He says, ‘My dream after my PhD is to move back to Canada and be a professor there. ‘How hard it is to acquire money there makes me anxious, and I don’t want to manage a lab where my kids are battling to survive.’

The Montreal Clinical Research Institute’s vice president of research and academic affairs, Michel Cayouette, says the C$1.8 billion funding boost is great but won’t be enough to allow supervisors to raise trainees’ stipends to award recipient levels. ‘This means that the vast majority of students and postdocs will continue to suffer financially,’ Cayouette says. There is more work to do in coming years to fill the budget gap and guarantee all trainees receive a living wage.