Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, members of the committee, for being here. It's a pleasure to be back in Ottawa to testify in front of you today.
Every year, the federal Government of Canada spends billions of dollars on research funding. Canadians rightly expect that this money will be used by and allocated to the most deserving researchers, based on excellence and excellence alone, in order for them to pursue high-quality research that will benefit Canadians and humanity in general. Sadly, this is no longer the case.
Today, federal research funding is often allocated on the basis of race, sex, gender identity, ideological conformity and other criteria that have nothing to do with the pursuit of truth and excellence. Thus, today, we have federally funded Canada research chair positions that are available only to people of a certain race or a certain sex, or a combination of both, even though none of these characteristics have anything to do with the quality of somebody's research. Indeed, universities may lose their funding under the Canada research chairs program unless they meet diversity quotas in the recruitment of professors.
Today, we have federally funded research programs that expect “applicants to clearly demonstrate their strong commitment to EDI in their applications”, as well as to integrate EDI in their “research practice and design”. With respect, the purpose of research design is to enable research to be done; it is not to promote specific ideological objectives.
In addition, there are many informal obstacles to the pursuit of excellence in the federal funding system for research. For example, in the humanities and social sciences, where I'm from, it is well known that research proposals that contain buzzwords and fashionable, progressive language have a much better chance of being funded than proposals for more traditional subjects that adopt more traditional approaches. This means that from the beginning of their careers, young scholars are taught that the way to get ahead in academia is to be a conformist and chase grant money using buzzwords, regardless of what they actually believe is intellectually valuable and important.
Like Dr. Freeman, I speak to this committee as a former recipient of money from SSHRC, money that enabled me to do my Ph.D. I'm very grateful to the Canadian taxpayer, SSHRC and the federal government for enabling me to have a career as an academic, which I would not have been able to pursue otherwise.
Naturally, I'm a strong believer in the value of investing public money in research. However, in these economically difficult times, many Canadians question the value of giving money to academics to study subjects that may sometimes seem irrelevant to their lives and personal struggles. The heavy-handed imposition of EDI and other ideological requirements in public research funding undermine public support for this funding and threaten the future of Canadian higher education. That is something that I think needs to be addressed, and urgently so.
Thank you very much.