I was drawing the analogy between what's happened to trust in the media in.... Now, in the U.S., trust in media is very low on the right. Republicans have very low trust in media. They have very low trust in academia now. In Canada, the trust in media, on the right, is very low. I think the trust in academia, which is coming down, has a potential to go where it is in the United States.
I want to pick up on some of what Yuan Yi Zhu was just talking about. When we think about the way the councils work, the allocation of funds comes from academic experts. Because they're drawn from academia, they're going to reflect the perspectives of academia, which is a good thing in terms of quality. However, in terms of ideology....
I will echo a couple of studies we have. There was a study on Canada by Chris Dummitt and Zach Patterson, I believe, which came out last year. It showed that 88% of Canadian academics identify on the left. Work and surveys that I've done show this number to be 75% or thereabouts, with only about 5% conservative. That slant....
Now, the other thing is that people who take an active role in setting policy tend to be even further left if they're in the humanities and social sciences. If they're active in anything to do with policy, I think they are going to be even further left. What we're getting is the furthest left point, roughly, of public opinion, which is having an outsized role in setting the agenda here.
I'm saying that, if you believe that mirroring the Canadian population by race and sex is the most important thing—more important than excellence—that's fine. That's a perfectly valid world view. However, what I'm trying to stress is that this is not the world view of most Canadians who pay tax to support the research enterprise. The more the tri-councils move in this direction.... They're already in this direction. Also, having things like diversity statements on your application, where you can signal your adherence to cultural socialism or DEI, is going to lead to political discrimination. Political discrimination is a real thing.
Here's another survey fact: In surveys I did, about 45% of Canadian academics would not hire a known Trump supporter for an academic job. In the U.S., it's 40%. In Britain, a third won't hire a known Brexit supporter. Now, there could be noise in that data, but, roughly speaking, there is significant political bias. There have been a lot of studies, mainly American, showing bias against right-leaning grant applications. People openly admit they would mark them down, so we have systemic political bias, I think, in the adjudication and selection processes of these policies. I'm wondering what people think. Are they just going to put their heads in the sand, go forth with business as usual and hope that what's happening in the U.S. will never happen in Canada?
I would like to see the councils get ahead of this problem and move to a colour-blind merit approach. Remove political criteria such as mandatory diversity statements. These are not universal consensus values. They are partisan values, and every survey will show a big partisan gap on these questions.