The argument here is that because support for graduate students and postgraduate fellows is so low, more and more students are leaving the country. When I was Graduate Student president in 1989-91, I made the argument that funding was too low. This hasn't changed. What strikes me about this article, though, is that its focus is exclusively on government funding. What about the role of tuition fees? What about the role of poor pay for graduate and sessional instructors? If government support for graduate students is low, university support is even lower! Hire more professors, instead of low-paid temps, and maybe students would stick around. (Also, the authors cite the Bouchard Report with approval for support. But it's primary recommendation is the creation of a 'Knowledge and Science Foundation' with a mandate to "better support coordination and encourage urgent, international, multi- and interdisciplinary and mission-driven research in Canada... and redeploy resources from the current ecosystem to help support its mandate." It might be more money, maybe. But it's definitely more control. Is that what they want?)
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