The contents of Prime Minister Mark Carney's first federal budget, released on 4 November, came as a relief to many researchers in Canada - because a large cut to the country's three main research-funding councils failed to materialize. The nation has also poured further investment into attracting international scientists from abroad. With the economic fallout from US President Donald Trump's tariffs and the planned increases in expenditure on housing, infrastructure and national defence, Canada's government departments had been asked to plan for 15% cuts in the lead-up to the 2025 budget. The scientific community feared that had those cuts been applied to the funding councils, they would have erased the large, multi-year increase promised in the 2024 budget. Much of this increase had been earmarked for long-overdue salary boosts for PhD students and postdoctoral fellows.