I should note that this report came out in February 2025, so when speaking about the current government, it was still a Liberal government, but it was under a different prime minister. I'm unaware of any shift or maintenance of the current government's priorities in terms of this language, so we'll have to wait and see.
As an academic and someone who has spent his entire adult life in the university, perhaps I'm biased in saying that I worry it contributes to the undermining of our post-secondary institutions. I think that when people see this type of language, when people hear the amount of money.... When bright people I know who aren't involved in the post-secondary sector hear that these granting agencies distribute $4 billion and more per year, they're shocked. That doesn't mean that that's not a good use of taxpayer dollars, but these sorts of activist projects are the ones that make the headlines more than—even within the social sciences—knowledge-creating, objective, falsifiable research.
It speaks to a potential and growing disillusion with the post-secondary sector amongst the Canadian public. That's what I worry about the most. These agencies do very important work, but these particular grants are, unfortunately, undermining it.