More than 100 post-doctorate students and researchers gathered on Parliament Hill Thursday for the 'Support our Science' rally, where they urged the federal government to boost funding for scientific grants to allow them to be paid a livable wage..The protestors unfurled and paraded a 60-metre-long open letter with 7,100 signatures, which called on the Liberal government to increase the amount of money it gives out in science and research grants in order to keep up with the pace of inflation since 2003..Following a rally, the protestors set out on a march, chanting slogans like "What do we want, a livable wage" and "pandemics and climate change are here, science can't wait another year." They hand-delivered the letter to Prime Minister's Justin Trudeau's office..According to the group, the majority of federally-funded graduate and postdoctoral scholarships amount to less than minimum wage, leading many budding scientists to seek better positions abroad or fall into poverty..In the group's letter, they also called on the number of graduate student's scholarships and postdoctoral fellowships awarded by the Tri Council Funding Agencies to be increased by 50%..University of Ottawa PhD student Tovah Kashetfay said she came out to protest a "...very rich system where only people who have mostly well off parents can end up doing a PhD.".Kashetfay also said she disliked how politicized science has been during the COVID-19 pandemic. "I think science can be a tool, but many people use it as a weapon," she said.."Science is mostly objective, and science is science. If you get evidence for something, you can't say 'I disliked that and I'm not going to take that into account' like some people do. People have weaponized science in a way with the pandemic that shouldn't have happened."
