Mitacs is eyeing a potential funding increase from the Nova Scotia government as it plans to nearly double the number of STEM internships it offers in the province over the next four or five years.

New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador have already committed to upping Mitacs’ funding. CEO John Hepburn said in an interview that his organization is expanding its operations, including in Nova Scotia, in response to the skilled labour shortage gripping the innovation economy.

“The Nova Scotia government does support us and have for many, many years,” said Hepburn. “They’ve been supporting us at a consistent level, and so we're in discussions ... about increasing our funding.

“And that's really just to acknowledge the increased activity in Nova Scotia.”

Based in Toronto with national programming, Mitacs is a non-profit that funds research and training in innovation-driven fields. Its financial backers include both the provinces and the federal government, and much of its work involves paying for the creation of four-month long “work-integrated learning” internships in the STEM fields.

Those internships usually entail a graduate student working on a joint research project with their university and a private-sector organization.

The federal government accounts for about 40 per cent of Mitacs’s funding, with the rest coming from the provinces and industry.

Last year, the organization funded 600 internships in Nova Scotia and 17,000 nationally. Last year’s federal budget promised Mitacs $708 million over five years to fund 85,000 innovation-related internships.

Historically, Hepburn said Mitacs has roughly doubled the amount of funding it distributes every three years, with the bulk of that money going to pay for internships at small and medium-sized enterprises — most often at university-based startup accelerators.

Mitacs also has funding relationships with most of the university-based startup accelerators in Atlantic Canada, including the Lab2Market program for academic researchers looking to commercialize their work. Hepburn met with several Lab2Market graduates at a photo-op Wednesday.

In the coming years, Hepburn said Mitacs plans to lean heavily on internships for international students as a way to address the ever-tightening labour market conditions faced by innovation companies.

Helping international students gain Canadian work experience reduces the barriers to them staying in the country and permanently joining local labour markets. Hepburn added that StatsCan data shows students are 40 percent more likely to stay in Canada if they participate in a Mitacs internship.

“The students who come from abroad, they have no Canadian connections other than to the university,” said Hepburn. “If we can provide a connection to Canadian industry ... that’s absolutely why they stay.”