I think it's a very important distinction. What I found in my study is that these three types of EDI—what I call mild EDI; moderate EDI, which is more or less affirmative action; and then the more activist EDI—are used interchangeably. SSHRC and NSERC don't cite it. We're talking about the first type of EDI here, and now we're talking about the second one. We can speak in the broad language of research inclusion and more inclusive research environments. Quite frankly, I think that's going on anyway within Canadian academia. We've moved away from the days when populations are systematically excluded, and reviewers.... If you've met any academics who are explicitly sexist or racist, those days are far behind us.
I think that the forms of inclusive research environments that we want to foster are being fostered without these EDI criteria, regardless. These EDI criteria are encouraging researchers to engage in politicized research. They're also taking a particular portion of scarce federal research dollars and saying it's only for this type of activist research, and not for the research that builds knowledge.