Written Submission for the Pre-Budget Consultations in Advance of the Upcoming Federal Budget
The Canadian Historical Association
August 2023
Recommendation 1: That the government implement the recommendation of the March 2023 Report of the Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System to increase funding for investigator-initiated research by “at least ten percent annually for five years to the granting councils’ total base budgets for their core grant programming.”
Recommendation 2: That the government “Increase the number and value of graduate student scholarships and postdoctoral fellowships by $185 million in 2023 and an additional $55 million per year thereafter.”
Founded in 1922, the Canadian Historical Association is Canada’s oldest academic association. It represents the interests of professional historians, post-doctoral fellows, and graduate students in both English Canada and French Canada. To this end, the CHA welcomes the opportunity to submit a brief to the House of Commons Finance Committee.
In short, the CHA supports the recommendation of the March 2023 Report of the Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System to increase funding for investigator-initiated research. Specifically, the CHA endorses the Advisory Panel’s call for “an increase of at least ten percent annually for five years to the granting councils’ total base budgets for their core grant programming.”[1]
The CHA is especially committed to graduate students and post-doctoral fellows. They are – literally – the future. And yet they are poorly served by a lack of financial support. The CHA undertook two studies, one on precarity (2021), the other on the future of the PhD in history in Canada (2022). Both confirmed what was suspected: graduate students and post-doctoral fellows are not able to make ends meet with the funding that is available to them. Not surprisingly, they report high levels of stress, anxiety, and depression.[2] Although there is no one cause, “Key to the despair is the funding situation.”[3]
The CHA agrees with Dr. Chad Gaffield, CEO of U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities and past president of the CHA. In his 13 June 2023 presentation to the Standing Committee on Science and Research, he underscored the importance of Canada’s graduate scholarship and post-doctoral fellowship programs to Canada’s overall science, research, and innovation ecosystem. But, he added, these programs are “at risk of failing Canada’s best and brightest.” For that matter, they are “at risk of failing our country’s future.”[4]
Led by Support Our Science, a grassroots organization, 10,000 graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, faculty members, and staff at 46 institutions across the country staged a one-day walkout to demand increased tri-council funding. As Mackenzy Metcalfe, Executive Director of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, argued, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows want to stay in Canada; they “want to contribute to Canada’s research ecosystem”; but without funding, they “simply cannot afford to.”[5] This is not good, to say the least, because as Samy-Jane Tremblay, President of the Quebec Student Union, put it, “research without students is simply impossible.”[6]
The CHA therefore endorses the recommendation by the Canadian Association of University Teachers to “Increase the number and value of graduate student scholarships and postdoctoral fellowships by $185 million in 2023 and an additional $55 million per year thereafter.”[7]
In the words of Support Our Science, “Every researcher deserves a living wage.”[8]
Thank you for your time and consideration,
Donald Wright
President
[1] Report of the Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System (Ottawa: Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, 2023), 46
[2] Canadian Council of the Academies, Degrees of Success (Ottawa: Canadian Council of the Academies, 2021), 40-41
[3] Catherine Carstairs, Sam Hossack, Will Langford, Tina Loo, Christine O’Bonsawin, Martin Pâquet, and John Walsh, “CHA Committee on the Future of the History PhD in Canada Report,” (Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association, 2022), 23
[4] Chad Gaffield, House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research, Minutes of Proceedings, 13 June 2023
[5] Mackenzy Metcalfe, House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research, Minutes of Proceedings, 4 May 2023
[6] Samy-Jane Tremblay, House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research, Minutes of Proceedings, 4 May 2023
[7] Canadian Association of University Teachers, “Brief to the Standing Committee on Science and Research,” June 2023
[8] Support Our Science. Accessed on 21 July 2023.