Hi,
It depends on what type of scholarship it is. RA obtained under a scholarship that requires you to work in your home country after graduation will not be eligible. I don't know what type of scholarship you are referring to so I can only speculate. RA positions that I am more familiar with involve Professors paying the student from an Industry financed project. The student gets an appointment from the University and is paid bi-weekly or monthly for his work as a Research Assistant. In BC, such payments are regarded as fellowships for tax purposes i.e. for purposes of saving the student some tax money (the 2006 Federal budget made all postsecondary scholarships and fellowships tax-free), and that's why a T4A, not T4 is issued, but in my opinion, such work experience qualifies as paid experience. Note that CIC has not explicitly defined paid work experience, and I personally know a few people whose RA work experience (with T4A) was accepted under CEC (Of course this doesn't mean that all RA experience is eligible).
I should also note that the Client Services Coordinator at Buffalo who regularly makes presentations about Canada Immigration to different universities in Canada clearly indicates that "Work experience such as TA’s or RA’s can be counted toward the one year fulltime equivalent as long as the work was done after receiving the first postsecondary degree in Canada"
Essat.
