Graduate students and postdoctoral researchers across Canada are planning to walk out at 11:00 a.m. on 1 May in protest at government-funded salaries that have remained flat since 2003. Support our Science, a grassroots group, is organizing a national student walkout hoping to get the attention of decision makers in Ottawa. 

“Federal scholarships – $17,500 for a master’s student, $21,000 or $35,000 for a doctoral student and about $45,000 for a postdoc – are seen as increasingly lagging the amounts paid elsewhere in the world….

In the U.K., the average base pay for a PhD student is nearly £18,000, or more than $30,000. In the European Union, salaries for PhD students range from about €16,000 ($21,000) in Ireland to nearly €50,000 ($85,000) in Denmark, according to websites that track these figures.”  (Globe and Mail, April 27, 2023).

Check the recent Globe and Mail article  “Lack of research funding pushes PhD students out of Canada, threatening a new brain drain” and the Nature Communications article “Canadian PhD students and postgrads plan mass walkout over low pay“.