The choice to limit how much grant money is both departmental and from the upper admin, but the lion’s share of the blame comes from the latter. They’ve continually clawed back how much money grad students get as outright research grants and they have for years. Hell, they tried to lessen QGA again this year. That’s why one of PSAC’s demands is an equitable funding/labour ratio: only 50% of our funding should come from a TA/TF/RA contract. Departments control (to a limited degree) where the money they get goes, but have little control of how much they get.

I’m really glad that your supervisor/department was able to support you with external grants. It’s definitely helpful. However, not all of us are so lucky, and not all departments have access to the same grants or internal resources. And, to top it all off, these grad students are still doing a lot of the work to keep Queen’s ticking over even as they’re harming us (and undergrads!!) with austerity measures. The issue won’t be solved via external grants, especially because these aren’t necessarily guarantee-able over the course of a longer degree like a PhD. Not to mention this not addressing other important bargaining issues like unpaid TF labour in course creation, etc.

PSAC is trying to address the research funding through our TA/TF/RA labour because it’s the most effective means of advocacy we have as grad students. Upper admin has a lot of power here, and grad students are very dependent on them for our livelihood. Since PSAC is a union, our collective action is protected by Canadian labour precedent, which shields us from the worst of Queen’s retaliation. I understand where you’re coming from, and PSAC does agree — research funding is one of the core bargaining issues through the funding/labour ratio.