Connecting talented graduates with the Government of Canada
Submissions are now opened. Apply today!
The National Student Paper Competition (NSPC), an annual competition, offers a unique opportunity for talented graduate students to connect with senior public servants, expand their networks, nurture their leadership skills, and foster employment opportunities with the federal public service.
For more information about the competition or the submission process, contact the NSPC team at nspc‑cneu@csps‑efpc.gc.ca.
Apply now
This promotional video features testimonials from past winners, judges and organizers of the National Student Paper Competition.
[00:00:00 Animated, brightly coloured concentric circles appear. Text on screen: National Student Paper Competition 2023-2024. Upbeat music plays.]
[00:00:09 Josianne Paul appears full screen.]
[00:00:12 A text appears on the screen: Josianne Paul, Acting Director, Policy and Strategic Relationships]
Josianne Paul: Hi, I'm Josianne Paul, Acting Director of the Policy and Strategic Relationships team here at the Canada School of Public Service. And it's my team that's in charge of setting up the National Student Paper Competition.
[00:00:12 A text appears on the screen: Canadian graduate students]
Josianne Paul: The National Student Paper Competition is open to Canadian graduate students of all disciplines. And the goal is to bring fresh ideas to the federal public service, while enabling them to connect with senior public servants, expand their network and facilitate their employment within the federal public service.
[00:00:40 Rajender Singh appears full screen. Text on screen: Gain experience]
[00:00:43 A text appears on the screen: Rajender Singh, 2023 – 2024 NSPC winner]
Rajender Singh: This is a fantastic opportunity for anyone who is looking to gain some experience in translating research knowledge into policy recommendations.
[00:00:53 A text appears on the screen: Great learning experience]
Rajender Singh: I would recommend the competition to other graduate students also because, it's a great learning experience and also it's a great exposure and it gives you great opportunity to network also with the people in the space.
Rajender Singh: I think for me, three specific learnings from the competition. Number one, through the process, you learn to translate research knowledge into policy recommendations. Second, you learn to present your point and, explain your issue in a high level manner to senior policy executives, senior government executives. And third, what I learned in the final, was looking at other finalist presentations, how poised, how calm they were in their delivery.
[00:01:31 Paul Pilieci appears full screen.]
[00:01:33 A text appears on the screen: Paul Pilieci, Director General, Policy, Priorities and Partnerships]
Paul Pilieci: My name is Paul Pilieci. I'm the director general of the policy, Priorities and Partnerships Directorate here at the Canada School of Public Service. My role in the National Student Paper Competition is to oversee the team that provides the wonderful support for the competition, as well as to participate in some of the judging.
[00:01:55 A text appears on the screen: Build bridges between the public service and academia]
Paul Pilieci: The National Student Paper Competition is, in my opinion, essential to the Canada School of Public Service as it's one of the key initiatives that really helps us build bridges between the public service and academia.
Paul Pilieci: I decided to hire a number of the winners of the National Student Paper Competition, because it's really evident that they bring the types of skills and information really relevant to the federal public service of today.
[00:02:06 Lydia Laflamme appears full screen.]
[00:02:09 A text appears on the screen: Lydia Laflamme, 2022 – 2023 NSPC winner]
Lydia Laflamme: As for the benefits of the competition, I think I was particularly lucky because of the media coverage for my project. So there were several media articles about my paper, and that also meant that several people tried to connect with me.
[00:02:24 A text appears on the screen: Create a network]
Lydia Laflamme: So, above all, it helped me to create a network of contacts that will serve me well in the long term to further similar ideas.
[00:02:34 Fraser Valentine appears full screen.]
[00:02:37 A text appears on the screen: Create Fraser Valentine, Executive Faculty Member and Senior Advisor to the President]
Fraser Valentine: Hi there. My name is Fraser Valentine. I'm on the faculty here at the Canada School of Public Service, and I was a judge last year for the competition.
[00:02:37 A text appears on the screen: Share ideas]
Fraser Valentine: The really wonderful thing about this competition is its dynamism. And by that I mean it attracts people from across the country to participate. And in turn, federal public servants from across the system also participate. And it's that sharing of ideas that really is the magic.
[00:02:57 Patrick Obendoerfer appears full screen.]
[00:02:59 A text appears on the screen: Patrick Obendoerfer, Senior Policy Advisor, Social Development Policy, Privy Council Office and 2014 – 2015 NSPC winner]
Patrick Obendoerfer: So my name is Patrick Obendoerfer. I'm a senior advisor at the Privy Council Office, and I was one of the winners in the 2014-15 competition.
[00:03:06 A text appears on the screen: Leverage your experience]
Patrick Obendoerfer: So after joining the competition, I leverage some of that experience to gain a role at Indigenous Services Canada in the policy sector. And then I was an advisor to the chief financial officer there, and then I worked in strategic policy. And I'm now a senior advisor at the Privy Council Office where I work in social policy.
[00:03:44 A text appears on the screen: Great introduction to public service]
Patrick Obendoerfer: I would encourage any student to join the National Student Paper Competition. It gave me the opportunity to take the concepts that I had in the paper that I wrote, and present it to the team that actually could make a difference in applying it. It gave me an opportunity to meet some of the most senior executives in the Government of Canada, including the Clerk of the Privy Council, and it introduced me, to what it's like to brief in the government of Canada and ultimately what my career would be like in the future. And so it's a great introduction into the public service, and I highly recommend the experience to anybody who can join.
[00:03:50 The CSPS animated logo appears on screen. Text on screen: canada.ca/school. Upbeat music plays.]
[00:03:57 The Government of Canada wordmark appears and fades to black.]
Launched in 2013, the NSPC is an annual competition organized by the Canada School of Public Service in partnership with the Canadian Association of Programs in Public Administration and the Institute of Public Administration of Canada. The competition is also supported by various Canadian higher-education institutions and associations, including the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies.
The aim of the competition is two-fold:
The Grand Prize winner(s) of the competition will receive the following:
The winner and the top five finalists will:
This video features Rajender Singh, winner of the eleventh National Student Paper Competition, who answers questions about his experience during and after the competition.
[00:00:10 Rajender Singh appears full screen. Text on screen: Rajender Singh, 2023-2024 NSPC winner.]
Rajender Singh: Hi everyone, my name is Rajender Singh and I presented on Internet addiction in this competition. Let us deep dive into the issue.
[00:00:21 Split screen: Rajender Singh and slide, as described.]
Rajender Singh: So, let us look through this particular statement on my screen right now.
"If we fail to retain existing users or add new users, or if our users decrease their level of engagement with our products, our revenue, financial results and businesses may be significantly harmed." Now, this is one of the core product risks that Meta publicly declares in its annual financial report that it submits to [the] US Security and Exchange Commission.
Now, one or the other version of this particular declaration can be found in the similar reports of other technology companies also, specifically social media companies and entertainment companies. These kinds of declarations and this sort of desire for the level of user engagement translates into a phenomenon which is widely recognised as Attention Economy.
[00:01:15 Split screen: Rajender Singh and slide, as described.]
Rajender Singh: Now, within this Attention Economy's marketplace, users' attention is the most prized commodity. And this reflects nowhere better than the key business metrics based on which these platform companies think about their business. For example, these daily active users and time spent on the platform. The more time a user spends on the platform, the more revenue these companies generate through advertising.
Now, because this is so central to their business practises, this leads to design and engineering practises which are publicly regretted and publicly acknowledged by the ex-employees of these companies only as sort of like addictive design practises. For example, look at these product features: This infinite scroll on Facebook or Instagram, or this autoplay button that we have on YouTube. This is like a hyper personalised content feeds that are continuously served to us. All of this is done with a singular goal of bringing users to the platform and keeping them hooked there for as long as possible. And the good news, obviously from these companies' perspective, is that this is working. Half of the planet's humanity is a daily active user on Meta's platforms.
[00:02:49 Split screen: Rajender Singh and slide, as described.]
Rajender Singh: However, all of this is coming at a cost. Attention Economy is transforming into Addiction Economy. Addiction here means prolonged or excessive Internet use that users often regret later on. And research has been telling us for decades now that this leads to a range of mental health issues, starting from diminished focus, or it induces loneliness, social isolation, and it also makes worse various existing mental health conditions like anxiety and depression.
Recent research from neuroscience is telling us that it activates similar kinds of molecular pathways in our brain as those are activated in other forms of addiction, for example, alcoholism or gambling for that matter.
[00:03:41 Split screen: Rajender Singh and slide, as described.]
Rajender Singh: And the most concerning part is that our younger populations are more susceptible to Internet addiction. This survey from CAMH clearly tells us that in 2021, 31% of Ontario's school age students were using social media platforms for more than 5 hours daily.
Now, in this particular context, it is super important for us, as a society, and for the public servants, for the government to think about some solutions to these particular problems, to address this problem.
[00:04:19 Split screen: Rajender Singh and slide, as described.]
Rajender Singh: And that's where I have three recommendations: Establishing a National Framework; regulating these Internet companies; and global collaboration around this particular issue.
[00:04:29 Split screen: Rajender Singh and slide, as described.]
Rajender Singh: So, in terms of establishing a National Framework, the first thing that we need to do is we need to clinically recognise Internet addiction as a valid form of mental health disorder in Canadian society. And once we do that, along with that, then we need to allocate resources; we need to create a diagnostic scale; we need to identify high risk groups; we need to develop a range of treatment and post-treatment plans.
This clinical recognition is super important because there is only one country, South Korea, which does this, and maybe to some extent China also. So, this clinical recognition and then allocating resources is a crucial step. However, even if the health care provisioning is in place, the root of the problem doesn't go away. It still exists.
[00:05:17 Split screen: Rajender Singh and slide, as described.]
Rajender Singh: And that is where I have my second recommendation about regulating Internet companies. [The] Canadian federal government must mandate that Internet companies demonstrate the absence of design practises in their offerings. This can be done through a range of legislations and advisories.
For example, requiring public scrutiny of their algorithms; limiting how much micro advertising and micro tracking these companies can do; or incentivizing the development of more humane technology alternatives that already existed. Now, obviously, when the government is going to come with such strong mandates, these companies are going to retaliate. We have seen this at the time of the Online News act.
[00:06:06 Split screen: Rajender Singh and slide, as described.]
Rajender Singh: And for that reason, I have my third recommendation in place, which is about globally collaborating with other countries to address the issue of Internet addiction. As I was referring earlier, the Internet addiction is not widely recognised, so we can advocate for getting it recognised through [the] WHO. We can also think about setting up a global knowledge base that studies the purpose and impact of Internet addiction. And finally, Canada is a member of [the] Digital Nations Collective. It can leverage its standings, therefore something like a Global Digital Bill of Rights, that ensures the safety of every human being on planet against these addictive design practises of Internet companies.
[00:06:56 Split screen: Rajender Singh and slide, as described.]
Rajender Singh: And with that, I would like to conclude by emphasising that the time is now for us to listen to our populations, to our healthcare professionals, and more recently even to our school boards, that the issue of Internet addiction is very real in Canada. We need healthcare provisioning for it. We need global collaboration for it, to ensure that tech companies are regulated, and they are following responsible digital practises, and we are navigating this digital landscape responsibly.
[00:07:26 Rajender Singh appears full screen.]
Rajender Singh: Thank you, everyone, for listening to my presentation.
[00:07:30 The CSPS animated logo appears on screen. Text on screen: canada.ca/school. Upbeat music plays.]
[00:07:37 The Government of Canada wordmark appears and fades to black.]
Rajender Singh: Hooked Online: A Call for Canadian Leadership in Addressing Internet Addiction (2023-2024)
Rajender Singh is a PhD candidate at Western University in London, Ontario. He conducts policy research at the intersection of technology, society, and the market. Specifically, his research investigates the novel strategies employed by Big Tech companies to enter and dominate the global education market while positioning themselves as neutral and altruistic players.
His other research involvements include studying the policy responses of U-15 Canadian universities during the COVID-19 pandemic, utilizing internet data and digital methods for social and educational research, and examining pedagogic practices in neurodiverse settings to formulate recommendations that transform educational practice.
Lydia Laflamme: Encouraging Environmentally Responsible Eating Behaviours Through Experimentalist Governance
Lydia Laflamme, one of two winners of the 10th National Student Paper Competition, is a master's student in political science at Université Laval in Québec. She is a member of the Research Chair on Democracy and Parliamentary Institutions, the Université Laval Research Group in Politics and Cognition, and the Leadership Chair in the Teaching of Digital Social Sciences. Her main areas of research are political psychology and electoral politics in Quebec and the rest of Canada. More specifically, she studies intergroup conflict, the impact of identity on political attitudes, and the connections between voter well-being and behaviour.
David Jones: Strategic Recommendations for Health Canada
David Jones, one of two winners of the 10th National Student Paper Competition, is a policy analyst and advisor, specializing in economics, healthcare and public policy. Currently, David is midway through the Master of Public Policy degree at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy of the University of Toronto. He also studied Economics at the University of Cambridge in the UK. David is passionate about providing high-quality research, analysis and advice that both supports efficient policy-making and improves the welfare of society.
Aisha Barkhad Video: Climate Change, Globalization, and Inequality: How Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases are Threatening Human Health in Canada
Bhajan Gill Video: Western University
Visit the CAPPA website to learn more about the top papers from past editions of the NSPC.
If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, consider applying to the NSPC. Apply now
The NSPC initiative is committed to contributing to a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive Canadian public service. We strongly encourage the participation of students from equity-seeking groups, including graduate students with disabilities, 2SLGBTQIA+ students and BIPOC students.
If you are interested in participating in the NSPC, you should:
For more information on the specifics of how to apply, please refer to the application checklist tab.
The NSPC is designed to allow graduate students to share inspiring and innovative ideas on topics related to governance and the Public Service of Canada. Papers should focus on the current priorities and concerns of the Government of Canada. All submissions on any other issue relevant to the federal public service are also welcome. To understand our current priorities, see in particular:
More information is available on the websites of the Privy Council Office and the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat.
Each paper should be a forward-looking think piece that explores innovative ideas and approaches to help position Canada and Canadians for the coming decade through solutions delivered by the Government of Canada.
In determining the paper's topic, applicants may want to consider the following questions:
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
Submitted papers must meet the following technical requirements:
The submitted papers will be evaluated using the matrix below.
After all submissions have been evaluated and the scores for each essay have been tallied, the five highest-scoring essays will be selected and the authors contacted.
To determine the winner, the top five finalists will be asked to present their research to a panel of senior government executives. The panel will evaluate and rank the presentations to determine the winner based on their:
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