UCGSA to Federal Leaders: What Graduate Students Can Do for Canada

CALGARY——The University of Calgary Graduate Students’ Association (UCGSA) has released an open letter detailing graduate student priorities for the upcoming federal election. The organization, which represents almost 7,500 graduate students, is calling for the federal parties to work with provinces to increase graduate student funding, exempt graduate students from the caps on international students, and to stop with the culture war rhetoric around federal research grants. 

You can read the full letter here: Click to view UCGSA’s Open Letter to Federal Leaders.

“These recommendations are intended to make it easier for graduate students to positively contribute to Canada as a whole,” Saaka Sulemana Saaka, the Chair of UCGSA’s Elected Council, said. “We are already contributing more to the economy and cutting-edge research than many realize, but we also want to be able to do more.” 

The letter—which is addressed to Liberal leader Mark Carney, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, and Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanche—makes the case that graduate students are an integral part of creating a robust, innovative, and productive economy. Furthermore, it argues that graduate research in areas such as sustainable energy, artificial intelligence, food insecurity, the Arctic, and medicine is essential for Canada to adapt to a new, uncertain geopolitical reality. Graduate students can also serve as important linkages between Canadian universities and foreign markets, the letter states, by engaging in “science diplomacy,” a way of expanding a country’s soft power by exchanging knowledge and technology. 

“Given that nearly 80% of our exports are to the United States, and given that the American government seems to rotate between a sort of prosperity-destroying isolationism and outright hostility, we need to find ways of creating connections between Canadian businesses and foreign markets,” Saaka said. “Graduate students are already essential for connecting universities with the private sector. We can help create the same sort of connections with willing buyers of Canadian goods abroad.” 

The letter outlines challenges that Canadian graduate education faces, however. It also notes that these challenges are particularly pressing, given the global rush to attract research talent that is fleeing the United States. 

“We’ve got data that shows the average European graduate stipend can be as much as five times what’s paid out in Canada,” Hunter Yaworski, a member of the Elected Council, said. “And 

that’s adjusted for cost of living. We won’t be able to keep our own students from leaving Canada with salaries like that, let alone convince others to study here.” 

The letter additionally highlights the caps on international student provincial attestation letters (PALs), which currently apply to graduate programs as well as undergraduates and polytechnic students, as hurting Canada’s competitiveness. It also identifies culture war rhetoric around federal funding for research as being a distraction from much needed discussions around how student and faculty research projects are evaluated. 

“[The PAL] caps haven’t just cost institutions money,” Yaworski said, “they’re actively preventing these places from expanding their graduate enrollment. We’ve got the best opportunity possible to convince researchers from the United States to study here, and we’ve effectively tied our shoes together.” 

“And the ‘anti-woke’ rhetoric surrounding federal research projects—especially in the social sciences and humanities—is deeply unhelpful,” Saaka added. “Not the least because it is the same sort of rhetoric that is driving so many researchers out of America in the first place.” 

For more information on UCGSA advocacy priorities, or for additional media inquires, please contact either advocacy.gsa@ucalgary.ca or gsaed@ucalgary.ca.