OTTAWA – In a University of Ottawa lab, 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,” she said. “The goal of this 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 at university, she’s almost done with her doctorate and has racked up about $100,000 in student debt.
“I often worked multiple jobs at once just to make ends meet,” she said. “When I started my master’s program, I had to take out additional loans because then you’re not allowed to work outside the lab.”
Funding for student researchers in Canada comes primarily through grants and fellowships from the three federal grant-making agencies: the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, and the Canadian Institutes of Health research.
But the rewards haven’t increased in years. Laframboise earned $21,000 a year until last year, when she received a $35,000 Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council grant.
She’s not alone — funding has become a central issue for the campus group she leads, called the Ottawa Science Policy Network.
The group says many stipends amount to less than minimum wage.
They also say undergraduates haven’t seen a raise since 2003, and postdocs have seen a salary increase of just 12.5 percent over those 19 years.
That’s the reason for an online petition calling on the federal government for raises. It has more than 1,000 signatures and will be presented to parliament in the fall.
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 linked to make a 60-metre train, to symbolically present to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Minister of Science and the innovations of François-Philippe Champagne.
They are calling for award funding amounts to be increased by 48 percent to match inflation since 2003 and indexed to inflation to keep pace. They also want the government to create 50 percent more scholarships for graduate and post-doctoral students.
Jeanette Wheaton, 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 reality, “I don’t think I could to do it.
“I am concerned because never before have undergraduates and postdocs been so financially burdened that their future careers are at risk.” And that means the future of science in Canada is at risk.
Champagne was not made available for an interview. In an emailed statement, a spokesman for his office said the value of the postdoctoral fellowships has been increased to $45,000 per year.
Asked to respond to the group’s requests for an increase, Laurie Bouchard said the government “will continue to work with (the research community) to explore ways we can continue to support our next generation of researchers.”
“We’re going to lose well-trained people to other places that will pay them,” Laframboise said. “I have no ambitions to stay in academia, but if I did, it wouldn’t be in Canada.”
A report by the House of Commons Science and Research Committee, published in June, recommended creating more scholarships and bursaries, giving researchers a 25 percent raise and indexing award amounts to the consumer price index.
He also called on the government to review and increase its funding to the three grant-making councils and to find ways to improve the continuity of funding they provide to researchers.
The committee said it heard from universities across Canada that doubling the number of awards available and increasing their value by a quarter would cost about $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, he’s apprenticed in the trades. He is 20 years old and has way more savings than I can even imagine. So I think that just gives a really good example of the disparity.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on August 11, 2022.
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