Research FAQ

FORMS:

• FGSR Hiring Authorization Form (HAF)

Research Associate vs. Research Assistant vs. Post Doc

When hiring a person from a research grant/contract to support research activity, the individual can either be hired as a Casual Employee or through an employment contract:

• Casual Employees hired to support research are often students (undergraduate or graduate) – although that is not a requirement – and who will be engaged for a duration normally shorter than 6 months.
• Contract employees hired to support research will normally be for positions with a longer engagement period and with a more defined set of required expertise. These may be full time (35 hours/week), or part time.  Our most common categories are:
  • Postdoctoral Research Fellow (“Postdoc”) – normally for an individual who has completed their PhD within the last 5 years at time of hiring.
  • Research Associate – reserved for individuals with more experience than a Postdoc.
  • Research Assistant – reserved for individuals with less experience than a Postdoc.
  • Other – for example: Research Coordinator, Research Manager

Process for hiring Contract Employees for Research Support:

• If you wish to hire an individual as a Casual Employee, please refer to the other section of this FAQ page.
• Hiring an individual into a research support contract position needs to be done with the process outlined here – this ensures that Saint Mary’s University’s People & Culture provide the employment offer with all the necessary details regarding responsibilities, benefits, etc.
• Once a preferred individual has been identified that is wished to be hired into a contract position, complete the FGSR Hiring Authorization Form (FGSR HAF). On the FGSR HAF:
  • pay attention to the boxes beside “salary”: contract employees are eligible for some benefits immediately upon starting their role (e.g. accrual of vacation time, access to health benefits), with other benefits becoming available after longer services (e.g. access to retirement plan).
  • the SMU fund which is identified to pay the employee’s salary (associated with the research grant/contract) will be charged the employer-contribution for these and other employment benefits (e.g. CPP, EI) – therefore, it is best to budget an additional 18%-of-salary charge to your fund (so that the total charge to your research fund will be approximately 1.18 times the indicated salary)
  • on the salary box, please indicate the Annual Full-Time Salary. This is calculated based on the assumption of 35 hours/week and 52 weeks per year; if you are choosing a part-time contract, the salary paid will be based on a proportion of this Annual Full-Time Salary, with the proportion equal to the ratio of hours/week required compared to 35.
• Email the completed FGSR HAF to Dean.FGSR@smu.ca, along with a C.V. of the identified person, and a short description of the job to be done (along with any minimum education and/or experience/skills required for the job)
• If the individual to be hired is not a Canadian citizen or a Permanent Resident of Canada, they will require a valid Work Permit – SMU People & Culture will support the process of the person securing a Work Permit by generating an Employment # through IRCC, and will provide it to the individual for their use i for applying for the Work Permit. 

• Such individuals may not start their role until they’ve received a Work Permit, and have physically arrived in Canada (so they can get their SIN, which must be done in person), so please set the start date a couple weeks in the future. 
• If it takes longer to get the Work Permit than allowed for, this can be managed ... but the individual still may not start the role until the Permit is obtained.

 What account # should I use when hiring a Postdoc or Research Associate?

• The account number to use for “Salaries Postdoctoral Fellows – Non Student” is 60033.
• The account number to use for “Salaries Research Associate” is 60034.

FORMS:

• Casual Employee Action and Change Form (CEAC)
• Bi-Weekly Pay Form OR   Fixed Remuneration
  
  

Process for hiring Casual Employees for Research Support:

The most common method faculty researchers will use to hire research assistants is to use “Casual Employment”.  This method can be used to hire individuals to assist in your research activity based either on a planned “full time period of work” (e.g. a summer student position designed to be full time – 35 hours per week, at SMU – for a 12 week period), or for a part-time work “as able” over a period (and submitting hours-worked forms along the way).   While, most frequently, professors will hire SMU students, this is not a necessary requirement.

To set up an assistant to be paid via this Casual Employment route, you will need to complete a “Casual Employee Action and Change Form”.   And then the payment schedule can be done by either setting up a fixed pay schedule over a period using the “Fixed Remuneration Form”, or for variable on-the-go hours use the “Bi-Weekly Time Report”.   These forms can all be found, with explanations, here (you will need to login to SMUPort to gain access):

https://www.smu.ca/about/hr-and-payroll-forms.html

These forms all get submitted to CasualPay@smu.ca once completed. 

Other notes: 

• casual employees don’t get vacation time, but rather get 4% extra pay in lieu – therefore, the pay-rate we use on these pay forms already includes this 4% ... so this means that actual minimum hourly wage which we can use via casual employment is the current Nova Scotia minimum wage plus 4%.
• the charge to your research account includes an additional approximately 10% charge to account for the employer contributions to EI and CPP.

What account # should I use when hiring a Casual Employee research assistant?

The account number to use depends on whether the assistant being hired is a student (then, undergraduate or graduate ... domestic or international), or not ... Here are the most relevant account numbers:

• 60101: Wages Graduate Student Canadian
• 60102: Wages Graduate Student International
• 60103: Wages UnderGraduate Student Canadian
• 60104: Wages UnderGraduate Student International
• 60034: Salaries Research Associate (for non-students)

What expenses are eligible?

You can use the funds for any “research eligible” expense.   At the direction of the federal Tri-Agencies, SMU and other Canadian universities now follow a “principles-based” approach to determining eligibility of research expenditures.   At SMU, we apply this approach to all research expenditures, independent of the source of the funds.

These principles are simply that the grant expenditures must:

• contribute to the direct costs of the research/activities for which the funds were awarded, with benefits  directly attributable to the grant

• be effective and economical
• not result in personal gain for members of the research team
• not be provided by the administering institution to their research personnel (i.e. not fall under an “indirect cost of research” category)

Research Purchasing

Please visit: https://smuhalifax.sharepoint.com/sites/fspa

How to Purchase ​​​​​​​​​​Computer Equipment with Research Funds

Please visit https://smuhalifax.sharepoint.com/sites/fspa/SitePages/researchfundingcomputerpurchases.aspx

If students, faculty, or other researchers from outside of Saint Mary’s University are coming to conduct research with a SMU faculty member (without any payment from/through SMU), these external researchers should be formally established as a Visiting Researcher or Visiting Research Student – this requirement is outlined in the SMU Visiting Scholars Policy
 
Please contact the Research Grants Officer for information about the process to formally appoint a Visiting Researcher or a Visiting Research Student – this process, when completed, will allow such Visitors to have official status at SMU for the period of their visit (e.g. ability to secure a SMU A# and Office365 and Library access, as needed) as well as providing the documentation needed for international scholars to secure an appropriate Visa to visit Canada through IRCC.

The Research Grants Officer will gather the needed details and other information, and prepare a formal Letter of Invitation from the Associate Vice-President Research to send to the planned visitor – the visitor is then asked to sign and return the formal Letter, indicating their acceptance and agreement to follow SMU policies during their visit.

Note that for international scholars to secure the needed Visa to enter Canada, other material will need to be provided to the Research Grants Officer (in addition to the signed acceptance of the Offer) –the Grants Officer then provides all information to People & Culture to allow them to secure the official IRCC “Employment Number” needed (even for an unpaid Visitor): 

• Signed copy of the invitation letter
• Scan of passport picture page
• Main duties and activities of job/main reason for visit
• Minimum education requirements of the job/visitor’s education
• Experience/skills requirements of the job
• Address for physical job location

The following will apply to research or special-project funds, whether they are funded externally or internally. These Funds will all start with 2 – “2xxxxx” – as opposed to operating budget Funds – “100000”:

• The “signing authority” on the fund (which is the professor, for these Funds) is able to sign on their own (without the need of any “one up” approval signature) for all purchases.  This includes purchase requisitions, pcards, invoice payment requests, reimbursement forms that are paying back people other than the professor, and casual hiring to support research (with the exceptions provided in the next items).
  
  
• When those signing authorities (professors) want to “pay themselves” (e.g. travel advances, reimbursement forms to pay back the professor any research-expenses incurred by the professor themselves, then a “one up” approval signature is required.  This “one up” signature may be provided by any of:
• The professor’s Department Chair
• The professor’s Dean (Arts, Science or Sobey School of Business)
• Associate VP Research

If the Department Chair and/or “line Dean” is not comfortable giving this “one up” approval signature, because they aren’t sure what expenses are actually eligible to be claimed, it should be forwarded to FGSR (dean.fgsr@smu.ca) for review.

• If a professor wants to hire a research support person on employment contract (e.g. postdoc, research associate, lab manager or any non-casual role, lasting longer than a few months), then such requests need to go through approval from FGSR via use of the FGSR Hiring Authorization Form (see: https://www.smu.ca/fgsr/research-faq.html).
  
  
• Any payments or reimbursements that use some-or-all of the payment from a fund that is not “owned” by the professor (e.g. Collective Agreement PD funds managed through Deans office, an FGSR international travel award), then the “owner” (Dean, or AVPR) must ensure to sign approval (since they are fund “owner”).
  
  
• Any hiring (casual, or contract) of relatives of the professor will need to be a request to the AVPR in FGSR to review and manage the request, in consultation with People & Culture, to ensure such hirings are possible under the terms of our Nepotism policy.

Sabbatical salary to research grant.pdf

Starting in Summer 2026, the following process has been clarified with respect to implementation of SMU-SMUFU Collective Agreement (2025-2028) Article 19.3.20(e)ii.

This article states:

In case a sabbaticant requests that, while on sabbatical leave, a portion of their
salary be earmarked for research, they shall submit the research proposal along
with an estimate of the expenses to be incurred to the Provost. It is understood
that the University will provide no guarantee that research expenses as presented
by Sabbaticants will be acceptable to Canada Customs and Revenue Agency.

The clarification is with respect to the format of the stated “research proposal”, and the process by which such a proposal may be approved by the Provost.

Research grant application:
The research proposal shall be submitted to the Provost (provost@smu.ca) in the format of a standard internal research grant application with the following sections:

• Summary or abstract
• Problem or research question
• Relevant literature
• Objectives
• Methodology and planned activities
• Planned dissemination or knowledge mobilization
• Suitability to undertake this work (including relevant prior contributions)
• Budget and budget rationale

It is recommended that the application be 4-6 pages in length (but no more than 6 pages in total).

Peer review:
To ensure that Saint Mary’s University applies expected due diligence in following Canada Revenue Agency’s guidelines (“Income Tax Folio S1-F2-C3, Scholarships, Research Grants and Other Education Assistance”), which is clear that the portion of sabbatical salary earmarked for research is defined as a “research grant”, the research proposal will be assessed using the same process which has been long established for Saint Mary’s University internal research awards.

As such, received research proposals will be reviewed by the FGSR Faculty Research Awards Committee.

The Associate Vice-President Research / Dean of Graduate Studies & Research (AVPR/FGSR-Dean) chairs the FGSR Research Awards Committee. Therefore, received proposals will be directed to the AVPR/FGSR-Dean through email to dean.fgsr@smu.ca.

Recommendations from the FGSR Research Awards Committee will be communicated to the Provost following review.

The Provost will then inform the sabbaticant of the decision. For positive decisions, the Provost will also inform SMU Payroll of the amount of the approved grant.

Notes regarding proposed Budget:
The budget submitted in the research proposal will be the basis of the research grant, so it is important that all anticipated expenditures are clearly specified. Since the grant has tax and benefit implications (see below), anticipated expenditures must be provided by calendar year. The Canada Revenue Agency will not permit converting salary to research grant for regular living expenses. Submitted grants must be based on standard, eligible, direct costs of doing research (e.g. travel costs, equipment, open access fees, etc.).

Considerations:
Once a research proposal is approved, and the grant amount calculated, following the process outlined above, the Provost will inform SMU Payroll, who will implement the grant. Once implemented, the grant has very little effect on the compensation received by a sabbaticant. The only immediate effect is a corresponding reduction in salary-based deductions. Otherwise, sabbaticants receive the full compensation they are entitled to.

The effect of the grant shows up in the income tax documents that sabbaticants receive from the university, which will show two kinds of income: salary and grant. When completing income taxes for the year(s) impacted by the sabbatical research grant, sabbaticants will need to submit evidence of research expenditures equalling or exceeding the amount of the grant. It is, therefore, very important that sabbaticants do not overestimate the grant amount requested since if the amount of the grant exceeds the total value of the receipts submitted to CRA, it could have negative tax consequences for the individual.

Also, as is indicated in all sabbatical approval letters: in awarding you a sabbatical research grant, SMU is not attesting that CRA will accept the expenditures claimed as eligible—those interactions and decisions are between individual sabbaticants and CRA. SMU suggests that sabbaticants seek independent advice as appropriate regarding use and implementation of approved sabbatical research grants.