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Canada’s Brain Drain Moment： Why U.S. Universities Are Losing Talent


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In this episode, we discuss an article by Adam Bjarndal, a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, on the phenomenon of Canadian faculty leaving the country to pursue a PhD in the United States.

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00:00:00.000 Hi and thanks for joining us. This is TPL Media. My name is Mike and there's all kinds of great
00:00:09.100 shows at tplmedia.ca. Stuff that concerns Canadians. That's what we do. We talk about
00:00:14.780 the issues that are in the news and most on Canadians' minds. So I'll encourage you to go
00:00:19.580 to tplmedia.ca or subscribe where it is you're listening to the show right now or watching it.
00:00:25.780 This is an interesting topic.
00:00:28.380 You know, we're talking about where Canada stands in the world quite often on this network,
00:00:32.760 whether it's in a certain industry or a certain sector,
00:00:35.660 how we're going to advance with the budgets we have and the current status of the world.
00:00:40.860 Tariffs are being placed upon us and the U.S. is upside down with us on business.
00:00:46.700 But this topic related directly to that in my mind,
00:00:50.400 an article that arose not too long ago about the brain drain in Canada.
00:00:55.040 McLean's Magazine published this article by the gentleman sitting beside me right now, Adam Bjarndal.
00:01:01.020 Thank you so much for joining us.
00:01:03.000 Thanks so much for having me.
00:01:04.480 Adam, this article was fascinating.
00:01:06.540 And maybe you could give me sort of the and share with us the key points and key beats on it.
00:01:12.220 But essentially, you landed yourself in the U.S. trying to find a better way back into Canada as a faculty member with a Ph.D.
00:01:23.100 And that's kind of where this journey began. But the story is really more recent as the brain drain in Canada widens and it there's a bit of a clampdown in the U.S. for supporting education.
00:01:37.200 It seemed like an optimal moment. Tell us about the article.
00:01:40.760 Well, the article I started writing the article in January of 2025.
00:01:46.080 So this was before a lot of, you know, a lot of the stuff had hit the fan.
00:01:50.040 um and and it was because even at that early stage it was really clear that this administration was
00:01:56.440 going to wreak havoc on higher education in this country and it has even more than i expected it to
00:02:02.640 and that really provides an opportunity for canada to reverse that like brain drain that
00:02:09.560 people have lamented for so long you know the us uh they do a lot of things wrong and they do some
00:02:16.060 things right. And one of the things they've done right, uh, for a long time has been higher
00:02:20.040 education. And that's why they attract all this top talent and, and, uh, you know, why they're
00:02:26.040 such a powerhouse in that regard. Um, and they're really stepping down from that role. They're not
00:02:32.500 leaders on that anymore. Uh, the administration is targeting, uh, higher education in that country.
00:02:37.840 And that means other countries, Canada, uh, top among them have the chance to step in and pick
00:02:43.080 up those pieces. Now, what sort of immediate, I guess, defunding or lack of attention has the
00:02:52.760 new administration, not so new anymore, put into place that's making it difficult for America to
00:03:00.020 compete in that way? They've really, it's been a kind of scattershot across the board. Like if you
00:03:05.900 look at what they've done, they're going into government agencies. So like the equivalent of
00:03:10.720 like, you know, NSERC or whatever, and they're going in and trying to gut some of those grants.
00:03:16.320 They're trying to take away grants that have already been awarded, which is just unheard of,
00:03:21.400 and restrict the awarding of future grants based on, you know, all sorts of things. But often,
00:03:27.860 sometimes it's just coming from sort of personal vendettas and grudges and, you know, pressure
00:03:33.740 tactics. Sometimes it's kind of ideologically aligned, like no grant that mentions DEI or any
00:03:40.220 word that's sort of in that sphere, whether it's related or not. But that's been one of the main
00:03:46.160 ways. Of course, there's also, you know, lawsuits and other attempts to harass and intimidate
00:03:52.080 universities. Yeah, that's a wild, that's a wild state of affairs. Because like you point out,
00:03:59.060 for so long, all of these Ivy League schools were so sought after. The degrees that came out of
00:04:06.160 them and the people that uh were supplying all of the industries in north america and around the
00:04:12.460 world had a certain reverence for the school system in america even in canada you know wow
00:04:17.860 such and such as kid is going to school in connecticut wow that's great they're going
00:04:22.480 to come out of that doing fantastic they're going to get a better education and your feeling is that
00:04:29.000 that's changing dramatically in the u.s um making it difficult for schools to hire quality
00:04:35.900 faculty yeah this this is like a great example of a positively reinforcing system the more
00:04:43.420 resources you give to universities the better they can do in terms of hiring the best faculty
00:04:49.980 setting up the best labs hosting international conferences and that has that's positively
00:04:54.700 reinforcing because you establish that reputation and now the best students want to come to you now
00:04:58.860 top researchers at other countries want to come and that only increases them the appeal but that's
00:05:04.380 It's so funny because that must bring that must bring high end industry into the countries that have that brain trust.
00:05:11.580 If you have the brain trust that is driving A.I., you're going to get more A.I. investment from big corporations in your country.
00:05:19.160 That's right. They want to be there where like the next, you know, like generation of smart people who are going to push things forward are going to be coming from the universities that train those people and industry snaps them up and push them to work.
00:05:32.280 Boston, medicine, Cupertino, you know, technology, all of these places became hubs of what the education was that was so valuable in that community.
00:05:44.360 It then really relates to, OK, so if you're Google, you're going to set up in Cupertino because the universities that focus on technology are there.
00:05:54.140 Same for Boston, Chicago. So the problem is there. It looks like Trump is going to continue with his mission.
00:06:01.540 And that's the one thing that we note here at the network often.
00:06:04.840 If you wonder what Trump is doing, just listen.
00:06:06.940 He's telling you what he's going to do.
00:06:09.080 And you can't for a second think, oh, well, yeah, that doesn't make a lot of sense.
00:06:13.940 He's not going to do that.
00:06:14.880 If he says he's going to do it, the likelihood is that he's going to do it.
00:06:19.400 And so if that means cutting DEI-infused programs and grants, well, you can count on that being the case, I think.
00:06:27.900 So that means that this is not – this is just beginning.
00:06:31.540 a sense in america what has that meant for you personally there well you know i think it's it's
00:06:40.900 hit as a as a kind of shock to everyone working in academia because things that you used to be
00:06:45.220 able to take for granted like you have uh funds coming from the government from an institution
00:06:51.380 these are funds that these aren't handouts these are funds that you worked hard for that might have
00:06:55.380 had dozens or hundreds of person hours put in to the applications once you're awarded those funds
00:07:00.900 you need to disperse them you might be hiring people uh phd students postdocs you might be
00:07:05.620 setting up labs or conferences whatever you're doing with it so this is all this is all part
00:07:10.340 of a network and suddenly it's being uh snapped away and even when it's not taken away even just
00:07:16.100 the threat of losing it think about what that does it's the same thing that it does in business
00:07:21.140 uncertainty uh reduces people's tolerance for risk why would you put hundreds of hours into
00:07:27.380 a grant application if not only might you not get it which was already some uncertainty but even if
00:07:32.260 you get it it's five-year term uh the administration might cut it off after one year that would be
00:07:37.380 worse than not getting it at all yeah you're right even the psychology even the psychology
00:07:43.780 of getting that grant and knowing that it could be taken away from you must limit the amount of
00:07:48.180 work that you do uh you know if you have a clear runway you're going to take off if there's hurdles
00:07:54.020 along the way you're never getting off the runway um so now this this issue is pretty clear uh i get
00:08:01.220 it i think that most people would what does this mean for canada how do we turn this into something
00:08:07.380 that really is an opportunity of the moment for canada where we have so many uh negative moments
00:08:14.580 with uh with the things happening in america this actually could be a positive how do you see that
00:08:19.940 Well, so for starters, Canada has world-class universities in education already. So this isn't
00:08:30.260 like a huge gap that we're trying to bridge and, you know, starting from nothing or from some huge
00:08:37.260 deficit. Canada is already a desirable place to live. The kinds of people who are powerhouses in
00:08:42.500 academia would love to live in Canada, would love to work in those universities. It's just been
00:08:47.540 that up until now, the opportunities in the U.S. have been many times more, and often the money has
00:08:54.240 just been greater. And at the end of the day, that speaks to a lot. It's not just for, you know,
00:08:58.840 personal enrichment. If you talk to any academic, they didn't get into that line of work to become
00:09:02.860 rich. But, you know, you want to have the resources so that you're not just scraping by, and you want
00:09:09.520 to have the institutional resources at your control so that you're getting good students and
00:09:13.140 and able to travel for conferences and all the kind of stuff that academics do.
00:09:18.180 So Canada is just positioned to scoop up all these people, people who are Americans, 0.99
00:09:24.600 people who are Canadians living in America, and also people of other nationalities who would
00:09:30.520 have before had the U.S. education system as their top choice, like that's where I want to go.
00:09:36.500 Now maybe looking for like somewhere where, you know, in addition to all the troubles that we
00:09:41.380 talked about, that they don't have to worry about being maybe, I don't know, scooped up off the
00:09:45.440 street by some masked people. That's a fair point, I suppose, and especially if you're a visitor to 1.00
00:09:53.780 America getting an education, that would be, you know, so now are we seeing any examples of other
00:10:00.800 countries taking advantage of this? Perhaps in Britain, Europe, any other countries saying,
00:10:07.140 okay, well, look, America's going to lose these people.
00:10:09.260 We're going to take them.
00:10:11.120 I think a lot of countries have already started putting those wheels in motion
00:10:15.340 sort of in parallel to many other tracks outside of education as well,
00:10:19.580 including Canada.
00:10:20.440 I mean, the budget that Carney released included quite a lot
00:10:25.020 to sort of revitalize the Canada Research Chairs Program,
00:10:28.080 which is something that I and many others recommended doing
00:10:32.180 exactly to attract that talent.
00:10:33.540 So the idea is already there that these like people are resources that can be brought in.
00:10:41.680 These are people who would be happy to live in Canada or Britain or, you know, it's not a huge difference in style of living and culture.
00:10:50.580 There are important differences, but it's not like a radical difference where you sort of wonder whether you can acclimatize.
00:10:56.380 and if you can set yourself up in a place where the environment is stable and safe and you can
00:11:04.060 do the work that you want to do academics in some ways are a lot like civil servants like these
00:11:08.700 people who they're not in it for the money they're in it because they have some kind of
00:11:11.660 love of that you know that that form of service be it like intellectual or public service or
00:11:17.820 whatever and these people will go where they can follow their passion why are you adam why did you
00:11:24.200 write this article? To get into McLean's magazine is no small thing, especially on a topic like
00:11:32.180 this. Why did you take this on yourself? Well, it was right at the beginning of the
00:11:38.860 administration taking power and already they were wreaking havoc. And at the time I was
00:11:45.000 angry and I was shocked by the extent of it. Little did I know that it would go even,
00:11:50.040 as you were saying, even far past what I dreamed of at that moment, the destruction.
00:11:56.600 But I was angry. I was seeing this great thing being ripped down and I couldn't do anything to
00:12:02.520 stop it. I can't vote here. I can scream into the void. But I thought, if they're going to ruin this,
00:12:09.800 we don't have to stand by and just say like, well, I guess the world is done with having higher
00:12:15.560 education be a you know a source of innovation and and it's the kind of bright light that it's
00:12:21.860 been other people can step up and take on the role that America is abdicating I think it's such a
00:12:29.100 really by the way it's such a logical idea that we could really focus this moment as you point
00:12:37.140 out in the budget there was something to really that really did address brain drain and I think
00:12:41.980 that the brain drain phrase was actually used in the presentation of that portion of the budget.
00:12:47.760 I think that we all kind of thought at that moment, what does this mean? Like, what is,
00:12:52.640 it's an abstract notion, if you think about it, Adam, that a guy who sets up a studio and does
00:12:58.120 a podcast now has to think about, okay, we don't want to lose the brain drain. What exactly is the
00:13:03.400 brain drain? Well, it's not just people with educations, it's the educators that bring the
00:13:09.700 grants, that bring the research, that bring the new minds, maybe try to position that for us so
00:13:17.560 that the average person like myself can understand that brain drain is more than just who gets hired
00:13:23.400 in a country. I think that's a great point. And I think this goes back to what I was saying before
00:13:29.220 about this being positively reinforcing and also this being an investment that reverberates not
00:13:35.120 just through like the fiscal quarter or something but reverberates down through the years and the
00:13:39.840 decades honestly this is a setting where like you're saying it's not just the researchers it's
00:13:45.120 the educators who train the next generation you also mentioned industry the industry sets up and
00:13:50.720 looks for talented people um and that also is positively reinforcing if you're a student if
00:13:55.840 you're a bright student from anywhere in the world and you want to be one day hired by whatever it is
00:14:01.280 google or your favorite you know big tech company or maybe some other industry you want to go to
00:14:06.640 the places that uh to the institutions that have a record of placing people uh at those uh companies
00:14:13.520 so you know that makes sense yeah like you you really do want to identify with the schools that
00:14:19.920 have these specific people that's right and so it's positively reinforcing in the sense that the
00:14:26.000 the stronger you are in it the more you attract strong people and the more you attract strong
00:14:29.360 people the stronger you become that's a feedback loop right and the us we saw through history all
00:14:35.520 the way back to you know during world war ii and before that um they saw that they invested heavily
00:14:41.600 in higher education and they have been reaping the benefits of that for decades they they it's
00:14:48.880 been a windfall for them over and over again and now we're positioned to reap that same windfall
00:14:55.200 if we just put the investment in. So interesting to think that Ivy didn't grow in the first year
00:15:01.200 right on those Ivy League schools. This is a long-standing commitment that the cities,
00:15:08.640 the country, the federal government, the universities and the educators that go there
00:15:13.680 have made over a long period of time to create the environment that is exalted education over
00:15:21.760 education so you know how do we make that more appealing and now let me ask you where would you
00:15:27.280 start in canada if what universities could best benefit in your mind and you can shout out your
00:15:33.280 own university if you want here but what universities do you think would immediately
00:15:37.520 benefit from a reversal of this brain drain uh being redirected into canada well i mean honestly
00:15:45.360 I think every Canadian university would benefit hugely from this. Because like I was saying,
00:15:51.200 Canada is a great place to live. It's not like you need to entice people to come there despite
00:15:56.480 the fact that there's no despite. It's a great place to live. It's even better now by comparison
00:16:03.440 to standards of living in the US, which are dropping precipitously, I would say. And in
00:16:10.400 terms of the universities, the Canada Research Chairs program is really oriented in exactly the
00:16:16.480 right way. It's not the government trying to come in and pick who should be higher. It's putting the
00:16:21.040 power in the hands of the universities to pick who to hire so they can build research groups that
00:16:26.160 have exactly this kind of self-perpetuating engine and continue to attract more people past that
00:16:32.720 initial investment. So I've always said at the level of undergraduate education,
00:16:40.000 Canadian universities, virtually any Canadian university is going to be as good as really even
00:16:45.840 the top American universities. It's when you get into those higher levels where you're looking at
00:16:50.480 like PhD research, this kind of stuff, where you see the money and the personnel really makes a
00:16:56.560 big difference. It's hard to find, you have a PhD and you're a smart person, it's hard to find a job
00:17:02.000 in canada it's hard to find a job anywhere but if there's 10 times as many openings in the country
00:17:07.840 to the south you're more likely to end up there um if canada opens its doors and creates more
00:17:14.880 positions for people they will come there are lots of smart people and they will benefit it will
00:17:20.080 benefit all levels better research better education attracting more students um and i want to also
00:17:27.360 focus on something you said before, which is this sort of investment in long-term thinking.
00:17:33.120 That's what education has always been. And that's at all levels. When you invest in education,
00:17:39.360 say at the elementary school level, you don't see the benefits to society for 10 years, 15 years.
00:17:45.920 You have to be forward thinking. You have to have what's best in mind, not just for the fiscal
00:17:50.640 quarter or for this election cycle. You have to actually have a view to the real future,
00:17:56.260 to the actual benefit of the society for your children and that's what this administration has
00:18:00.740 no concept of and that's where canada and the the people who are looking out for our future
00:18:06.580 can step in and make such an important big change okay so now uh i don't know when the last time
00:18:12.260 you're in canada was but we have a tendency to get in the way of ourselves and slow things down
00:18:18.180 uh we do that in many ways uh quite often we do it in the in the form of virtue signaling
00:18:24.020 uh and not doing the logical thing if i may be honest with you in my opinion
00:18:30.020 how are we going to mess this up as canadians give me the pitfalls let's try to give our
00:18:35.380 government some advice right now so they don't mess up this opportunity i'll make sure that
00:18:40.340 this gets directly to uh prime minister carney i promise all right i'll take your word for that
00:18:46.820 look i mean so i've i've been living in the states for quite a while and that means that
00:18:51.060 as much as I pay attention, I don't have my finger on the pulse of what's happening in Canada in the
00:18:55.780 same way that I would if I lived there. And I would love to come back and live in Canada again
00:19:02.900 at some point, especially these days. But education has always been a tough sell, partly because
00:19:10.740 it has these longer term benefits that you don't reap right away. I think it could be even a
00:19:18.260 a tougher sell right now because like you mentioned in the opening, this isn't the only
00:19:22.600 problem that's facing the nation right now. There are a lot of more immediate and more
00:19:29.080 sort of devastating seeming problems. And so I think the sort of pitfall here is to prioritize
00:19:35.560 dealing with tariffs, establishing trade relationships, the kinds of investments that
00:19:43.280 do need to be made, but prioritizing them over these longer term investments. This is
00:19:48.140 not a blip. What we're seeing happen in the U.S., this isn't something that's going to be over in
00:19:54.640 three years when Trump leaves office. It might recede for a little bit, depending on who succeeds
00:19:59.680 them. But what we've seen is that the system is fundamentally broken. And that's what I think
00:20:04.140 Canadian leaders have done an excellent job of pointing out. And that reorientation that needs
00:20:09.220 to happen can't just be for the short term. It needs to be for the long, long term. And that's
00:20:17.320 where the pitfall is I think that education is can be a hard sell because it's for the long term
00:20:22.080 but so important it's interesting because now uh we have a prime minister that's put out a budget
00:20:27.160 that really does uh look long term I think because frankly he was left with a huge deficit that he
00:20:33.820 had to he had to kind of bury on behalf of his party but in the end trying to manage funds at
00:20:39.880 a time where things are difficult uh in trade globally uh the economies are failing and things
00:20:45.220 like that. The one thing that I think that we do see is these national large programs,
00:20:52.820 these infrastructure deals that we're putting together in certain parts of the country.
00:20:57.120 This feels like one of those. This is an opportunity to actually build a physical
00:21:05.080 manifestation of this and say, okay, we are going to create what is a really ideal enticing offer
00:21:13.340 for people with the brains in the areas we need the most. Maybe it won't be in medicine.
00:21:18.500 It might be in natural resources. It may not be in technology. It might be in gas and
00:21:25.160 environment, these sort of things. But I do think that this really does need to be viewed as one of
00:21:32.480 these national, large, long-term projects. That's the one thing that when I was reading the article,
00:21:38.940 I thought, yeah, this needs to be a long-term commitment.
00:21:43.600 If we want to compete with the Londons of the world,
00:21:46.640 if we want to compete with New York and Boston
00:21:49.580 and all of these other major, California,
00:21:52.480 all these other major states that have outstanding education
00:21:56.040 historically in these incredible universities and schools,
00:22:00.860 we really do need to get a long-term plan together.
00:22:04.840 Do you see any indication of that anywhere on the Canadian side of the border?
00:22:14.400 Well, I mean, like I said, the budget is a good first step, but you're right, it needs to be a long-term plan.
00:22:19.200 It needs to be a priority.
00:22:20.960 I think viewing it the way that you framed it as a kind of investment in a sort of resource that we're developing is the right way to go.
00:22:30.140 I think a lot of it ends up being framed around AI, which is a little dangerous because, yes, we don't want to be left behind in that, but that's a very volatile sector.
00:22:40.620 And let's say that the judgments that come out about how useful it's going to be are not all, you know, they're not all coming from sort of disinterested parties.
00:22:53.300 they often have no there's a there's a lot of investment behind the discussion uh right now of
00:22:58.740 ai and sure in the ai boom but the ai boom came to be from an environment that prioritized not
00:23:10.420 ai research but research so sure we don't want to be behind the ai boom but we could also be
00:23:16.260 in front of whatever the next thing is the thing that no one has dreamed of yet we could be right
00:23:20.580 there on the ground level of that that's the promise of this and that's why this deserves
00:23:24.100 that kind of attention oh i like that perspective on it so i don't know if you know this but a lot
00:23:29.300 of the colleges and universities right now in canada are taking a hit because immigration
00:23:33.620 is being clawed back and that may mean better opportunities for canadian students but for the
00:23:41.300 universities it's really been devastating i think from a financial standpoint so this might be a
00:23:47.780 difficult moment to get them to pay attention to this at the federal level although it's a
00:23:52.740 real opportunity to reposition for these schools yeah i mean it's a complex issue and i know there's
00:23:59.780 a lot of there you know a lot of sort of intersects with a lot of different political um um issues
00:24:05.700 there i would love to see an expansion that sort of like like a rising tide that lifts all boats
00:24:11.700 an expansion of the kind of resources for the universities that give more opportunities for
00:24:15.860 Canadian students but also keep our doors open or open them even wider for the talent from abroad
00:24:21.700 that's if we don't have to look that far we can look at the example of the U.S. and their enormous
00:24:27.540 success in this field it did not come from protectionism they brought in talent from
00:24:33.140 all over the world over decades and decades and that talent became a part of their core strength
00:24:40.100 and that's always been the way that Canada has done it and I think we can continue to do that
00:24:43.780 We don't want to be prioritizing immigration at the expense of domestic students, but I don't think that needs to be an either-or choice.
00:24:54.640 I like that you can take the Canadian boy out of Canada, but you cannot take him out of his Kenora dinner jacket. 0.98
00:25:00.820 I love your shirt. It's very Canadiana.
00:25:04.320 Listen, Adam, I appreciate your perspective on this and taking the time to talk to us about it.
00:25:08.340 If people wanted to reach out to you to find out more about what you're talking about, maybe somebody wants to get a plan out of your head, where would I recommend people do that?
00:25:19.000 I mean, email is always the most direct way to contact me.
00:25:22.360 I also have a website that has my contact information right up front.
00:25:25.520 I'm not hard to find.
00:25:26.760 I'll make sure that we include that in the description here.
00:25:29.600 Perfect. Thank you.
00:25:31.020 Thanks for the opportunity to talk about this.
00:25:32.600 I think it's so important and I continue to, you know, be passionate about it.
00:25:37.280 And I'm really watching closely how things go and trying to support it as much as possible.
00:25:44.160 Adam, I really appreciate you doing this.
00:25:45.800 And let's definitely stay in touch on this and other education issues because you've got a very keen perspective on it.
00:25:52.860 And from the U.S. side of things, I am sorry that so much is getting cut.
00:25:57.140 It is a tragedy for the educators here, the faculty members, the students and the researchers trying to push ahead.
00:26:04.140 So I wish you great success over there.
00:26:06.900 But with the brain drain in Canada, keeping a perspective on it with us, I will definitely reach out again.
00:26:13.360 I would love that. Thanks again so much for the chance to talk about this.
00:26:16.680 Thank you for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you're watching or listening to this and visit tplmedia.ca.
00:26:23.480 You can download the app, by the way. We've got that for Apple and Android.
00:26:27.140 and whatever the next device is, I'm sure we'll be ready with that too.
00:26:30.660 We just need the brain drain to stop in Canada and we'll invent the new device.
00:26:34.540 Remember, RIM. We'll see you next time.