When the pandemic threatened to cancel the work terms of postsecondary students across the country last year, professors got creative and used government relief money to fund scores of positions that hadn’t been available before.
But that funding has run out and new money promised in the April federal budget specifically for student work placements has not materialized in time for some of this summer’s internships.
One professor, who devised an innovative program last year aimed at addressing the economic toll and job losses his students were facing owing to the pandemic, says he is having to turn to crowdfunding to keep the program running.
“The government made promises in the budget but gave us no details,” said Mads Kaern, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Ottawa.
Dr. Kaern worked with the university last April to start bioExperience, a program aimed at creating placements for students in the field of biotechnology. He used funds from the federal government’s Student Work Placement Program (SWPP) to develop jobs students could do while working from home and away from Ottawa.
Changes to the SWPP to address pandemic realities were announced in April, 2020, including $80-million in funding, but the federal government boosted the program with another $266-million in September, according to a statement from Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC).
April’s federal budget pledged to invest $239.8-million in the program for the 2021-2022 academic year. The department noted in a statement the funding would increase the wage subsidy available for employers to 75 per cent, up to $7,500 per student.
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“This is expected to provide 50,000 young people with valuable experience-building opportunities in 2021-22 (an increase of 20,000),” wrote ESDC communications officer Saskia Rodenburg. “The temporary measures, which include postsecondary institutions being eligible for the Student Work Placement Program’s wage subsidy, are in effect until May 31, 2021, for the time being.”
Dr. Kaern said no clear details had been provided about who would qualify for the extended funding. Academic internships need to last for 13 weeks, he noted, so time is running out.
“As the timing of the budget (mid-April) was so close to the summer term, Employment and Social Development Canada has expedited efforts to support program implementation. The flexibilities introduced last year are extended into 2021-22,” ESDC spokesperson Samuelle Carbonneau added in a subsequent statement to The Globe.
Dr. Kaern pointed out that the timing of the budget has caused problems for students’ summer work placements, given that many such positions have already begun earlier this month.
“My reaction is that the federal government is doing the right thing, but fumbled by delaying the budget,” he said. “I appreciate the expedited efforts … and I know that the agencies involved are both professional and highly dedicated. [But] everyone involved has been ready for these rules to be announced since mid-January, and we could have done amazing things this summer if they had been confirmed earlier.”
He added that the impact to his student placement program means the loss of 80 summer jobs involving two universities, a provincial agency, a Northern business development group and more than a dozen biotech companies and startups.
Dr. Kaern said that after several attempts to bring the issue to federal officials’ attention, he was able to have a “constructive” meeting with a SWPP manager this week regarding the extension, but despite the conversation, the bioExperience program is unlikely to be able to access funding for this summer’s placements.
Last spring, bioExperience employed 60 students who received a salary while taking on projects such as remediating microplastic pollution in the Ottawa River, assessing CBD for the treatment of inflammatory responses in COVID-19 patients, and developing a virtual platform to design and simulate models of RNA-based gene regulatory networks.
Hertek Gill, a second-year biomedical sciences student at the University of Ottawa, worked on designing a 3-D model and a protocol for a portable strip-based testing kit for viruses.
“The goal of this project was to gain a better understanding of current viral detection methods in use. On top of understanding the benefits and shortcomings of the different testing methods, we also investigated newer viral detection methods,” he explained.
“This program allowed me to interact with other students who were in different faculties and [gain] insight into their way of looking at problems and how to communicate with co-workers who had a different background.”
For this year, the University of Ottawa had teamed up with University of Waterloo and planned to have between 70 and 90 students working in jobs supplied by between eight and 10 industry partners. Those plans have had to be dramatically scaled back given the delay on renewing the SWPP.
Fifteen of those students who had already been hired have since been told they will not be able to keep their positions. Dr. Kaern attempted to keep the work of five full-time and two part-time students going by seeking out sponsorships and by paying for the positions out of his own pocket.
Dr. Kaern said the remaining students will work on entrepreneurial projects that can hopefully generate enough revenue to hire more students next year.
Since March, 2020, youth in Canada aged 15-24 have been the hardest hit of all demographics in the country when it comes to employment loss, according to Statistics Canada. Unemployment levels for youth between the ages 15-24 went up from 11 per cent in 2019 to 20.1 per cent in 2020, compared to an increase from 4.8 per cent to 7.8 per cent in people aged 25-54, and an increase from 5.4 per cent to 8 per cent in people aged 55-64, according to Statscan data.
“Young people go into great debt, work extremely hard to get credentials and find that they are often in a job market that puts them into jobs that they are overqualified for,” said David Camfield, associate professor of labour studies at the University of Manitoba. “Anything that can be done to help young workers in this time, when you have crushing debt levels and such a bleak future, is important.”
The University of Waterloo, which has the world’s largest co-op program, also accessed SWPP funds last year, which helped to hire more than 700 co-op students who aided lecturers, professors and administrators in moving all of their coursework online at the beginning of the pandemic, according to university spokesperson Rebecca Elming.
Fighting for funding for the bioExperience program’s student salaries, which are funded by combining the SWPP and a subsidy from the University of Ottawa called the Work-Study Program, is an issue of equity, Dr. Kaern said.
“Many students rely on having an income over the summer to pay for tuition, rent and food,” he said. “I could have created a program where students could volunteer, but that would only have been available to students who already have resources.”
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