Thank you very much.
Evidence of meeting #5 for Science and Research in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was excellence.
A video is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #5 for Science and Research in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was excellence.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
We will now proceed to Mr. Blanchette-Joncas, for two and a half minutes.
Bloc
Maxime Blanchette-Joncas Bloc Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Professor Snow, you noted that the Canadian Institutes of Health Research now defines excellence as being anti-racist, anti-colonial and anti-ableist, meaning, opposed to discrimination based on disability. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada issues some calls for proposals that are already ideologically biased.
Wouldn't this type of criterion distract from the primary mission of these organizations, which should be to fund open research, regardless of its focus?
Associate Professor, University of Guelph, As an Individual
I think that's exactly right. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research, CIHR, whose definition of research excellence includes language of inclusivity and diversity on its research excellence framework page, has that research is excellent when it's inclusive, equitable, diverse, anti-racist, anti-ableist and anti-colonial in approach and impact.
Now, probably most of us would say, “I'm not ableist. I'm not racist. I'm not a colonialist,” Those are good things, but these terms in academia.... I am familiar with progressive academia. These are very specific frameworks, often unfalsifiably formed, that have a particular way of looking at the world and are not, first and foremost, about knowledge creation. They're built on particular assumptions about how society is governed and how it ought to be changed. When you adopt that as your framework for all health and medical funding across the country, you are going to necessarily discourage certain forms of knowledge creation and encourage activist research that is not designed to help us achieve better medical and health outcomes and knowledge.
I heard a presentation earlier today about how we don't want to leave anyone on the sidelines. Well, this is leaving on the sidelines scholars who don't use an anti-racist, anti-ableist and anti-colonial approach in their hard science research on health and medicine. If I had one recommendation of what should go within the agencies, it would be that component of that research excellence framework from the beginning.
Bloc
Maxime Blanchette-Joncas Bloc Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC
Do you have anything to add quickly about Canada's scientific competitiveness and EDI criteria?
Associate Professor, University of Guelph, As an Individual
I would just say that, in terms of how competitive these scholarships are, we would have a greater number of people able to get the grants for research excellence if we were to remove some of these EDI criteria in the grants themselves, and move the—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
I'm sorry for interrupting, but the time is up.
We will have a quick one-minute—
Bloc
Maxime Blanchette-Joncas Bloc Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC
Madam Chair, would it be possible to ask Professor Snow for a written response to my last question, please?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
Thank you.
If the witnesses are not able to complete their answers, they can always send written submissions. They will be incorporated as we go through the drafting of the report and will be circulated to all of the members.
MP Ho, you have one minute.
Conservative
Vincent Ho Conservative Richmond Hill South, ON
My question is for Professor Snow. I'm going to go back to the basics. DEI is supposed to create this fair and inclusive environment that is supposed to address injustices of marginalized groups. Do you think that it actually has the opposite effect of marginalizing those who don't adhere to a certain ideological viewpoint?
Associate Professor, University of Guelph, As an Individual
Yes, absolutely. I think that especially what I call the more “activist” form of EDI has that effect. I don't doubt that, decades ago, requirements or suggestions for inclusion had the effect of bringing people in, but I think we're increasingly seeing.... You've seen witnesses this week talk about how we're excluding particular types of research with this. What I see in the EDI requirements is a narrowing, in terms of the scope of federally funded research in the areas where EDI applies, and that's really the opposite of what EDI was originally supposed to be about.
Conservative
Vincent Ho Conservative Richmond Hill South, ON
It's just like every Liberal policy—achieve the opposite disastrous effect.
Liberal
Liberal
Helena Jaczek Liberal Markham—Stouffville, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Dr. Kendall, you've heard Professor Snow and some of his criticism around EDI.
Are you aware of this activist EDI agenda that is apparently there, in Professor Snow's opinion, to promote a political agenda? Have you seen any of this in the work that you've been doing?
Director, Partnership for Women's Health Research Canada
I must say that I don't believe that there is an activist agenda in trying to figure out how we can make our health services and our health research welcoming to populations who experience racial discrimination, ableism and a history of colonialism.
I think that these structural issues are important to address and that research that addresses them moves us forward in promoting the health of all Canadians.
Thank you.
September 24th, 2025 / 5:30 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly DeRidder Conservative Kitchener Centre, ON
Could Mr. Snow table his report on the research that he talked about today?
Also, could we get a list from Mr. Snow of the academic grant title examples that he identified as activist or ideological?
Liberal
Associate Professor, University of Guelph, As an Individual
Those titles are in the report itself.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
I want to thank all of the witnesses for appearing before the committee and providing important testimony.
I will suspend the meeting for a few minutes so that we can allow the witnesses for the second round to take their places.
The meeting is suspended.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of the new witnesses. Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mic and please mute yourself when you are not speaking.
For those on Zoom, at the bottom of your screen you can select the appropriate channel for interpretation: floor, English or French. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.
I remind you that all comments should be addressed through the chair.
For this panel, I would like to welcome our witnesses. We are joined by Dr. Nadia Hasan, assistant professor, school of gender, sexuality and women’s studies, York University, by video conference. We have Professor Eric Kaufmann, University of Buckingham, appearing by video conference. A special thanks to you for joining all the way from there. We are also joined by Gad Saad, visiting scholar, Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom, University of Mississippi, by video conference. Our fourth witness for today is Robert Thomas, president, Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship. All of the witnesses will have five minutes for their opening remarks.
We will start with Mr. Saad.
The floor is yours.
Gad Saad Visiting Scholar, Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom, University of Mississippi, As an Individual
Many thanks for the invitation to participate in this important discussion.
Meritocracy is the sole operative ethos when judging research excellence. Scientific quests have a singular goal: to better understand the world and its wondrous mysteries. Science is not an empathy party meant to elevate and celebrate so-called marginalized groups. The use of diversity, inclusion and equity when allocating research funds is an affront to individual dignity and to research excellence.
A 2025 report by the Aristotle Foundation found that 97.5% of academic job postings at Canadian universities referenced diversity, inclusion and equity.
I will discuss briefly three such examples from my chapter in The War on Science.
The first example is that the University of Waterloo's School of Computer Science recently advertised for two open NSERC tier one Canada research chairs. I will quote their call. “Position 1, all areas of artificial intelligence. The call is open only to qualified individuals who self-identify as women, transgender, gender-fluid, non-binary, or Two-spirit.”
“Position 2, all areas of computer science. The call is open only to qualified individuals who self-identify as a member of a racialized minority.”
The second example, from the University of British Columbia, is for a tier one Canada research chair in oral cancer research. It reads, “the selection will be restricted to members of the following federally designated groups: people with disabilities, Indigenous people, racialized people, women, and people from minoritized gender identity groups.”
The third example, from my own university, Concordia University, is that researchers there obtained a grant from the new frontiers in research fund to decolonize light. On their website, they explain, “The Decolonizing Light project explores ways and approaches to decolonize science, such as revitalizing and restoring Indigenous knowledges, and capacity building.”
The “Decolonizing Light” project is congruent with the five-year strategic plan of Concordia to decolonize and to indigenize the entire curriculum and pedagogy. Apparently, science has suffered for too long from a whiteness problem.
Canadian medicine has also succumbed to this parasitized ideological capture, as I discuss in my forthcoming book, Suicidal Empathy. The anti-racism expert working group of CanMEDS, which develops evolving training codes for physicians and surgeons in Canada, concluded, “A new model of CanMEDS would seek to centre values such as anti-oppression, anti-racism, and social justice, rather than medical expertise.”
If you suffer from an aggressive cancer, it might be comforting to know that your oncologist is trained to “combat the historical and ongoing structures of racism, white supremacy, settler colonialism, heteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, classism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and more.”
I will end by quoting from my book, The Parasitic Mind:
[S]cience is, or should be, an apolitical process. Scientific truths and natural laws exist independent of researchers’ identities. The distribution of prime numbers does not change as a function of whether the mathematician is a white heterosexual Christian man or a transgendered, Muslim,...(obese) individual. The periodic table of elements is not dependent on whether a chemist is a Latinx queer or a cisnormative Hasidic Jew. Oh, you are a non-binary bisexual chemist? Well this completely changes the atomic numbers of Carbon, Palladium, and Uranium.
Ideological activism is anathema to research excellence. Meritocracy is all that matters.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
Thank you, Mr. Saad.
Dr. Hasan, you will have five minutes for your opening remarks. You can go ahead, please.
Nadia Hasan Assistant Professor, School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, York University, As an Individual
Thank you for inviting me to speak today.
As mentioned, my name is Nadia Hasan, and I'm an assistant professor of gender, sexuality and women's studies. I'm also the director of the Islamophobia research hub at York University in Toronto. I have nearly 20 years of experience working at the intersection of academic and community-based research through non-profit organizations and post-secondary institutions.
Today I want to talk about two things, first, the importance of funding research that deepens our understanding of, and helps us combat, racism, hate and discrimination in all its forms, and second, how federal funding can strengthen meaningful partnerships with community.
We're having this conversation in a troubling global context. In the United States, the targeting of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives has brought with it a dismantling of academic freedom itself. This has led to restrictions so sweeping that terms such as climate, woman, peanut allergies and safe drinking water have made their way onto banned words lists in federal agencies, according to outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post and PEN America, which also report that this has already resulted in failed or rescinded research grants.
This type of political censorship undermines democracy, limits innovation and stifles critical scholarship. It is a cautionary tale for Canada and a reminder that our federal agencies, as well as this committee, must resist these chilling trends.
Let me begin with my first point, why Canada must continue to fund research that addresses racism and discrimination. The evidence is strong that diversity in research ecosystems results in more innovation and better research impact. For example, research on Black maternal health, an area that has been long ignored in the research community, uncovered systemic inequities that led to new initiatives reducing infant and maternal mortality. Indigenous-led scholarship has revealed how the devastating impacts of colonial violence, including language loss and cultural erasure, have implications for health and safety while pushing institutions towards truth-telling and action. These examples, however incomplete, show how rigorous research does more than describe problems. It has saved lives, changed systems and built paths to justice.
This work is not easy, and at times it requires courage, though it should not have to. Consider the recent stabbing of a gender studies professor and students during a lecture at the University of Waterloo. The attacker admitted to deliberately targeting the class and, in his manifesto, expressed support for the gunman who livestreamed the killing of 51 people at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. He also referenced a massacre of 69 young people in Norway carried out in the name of xenophobic and Islamophobic ideologies.
In this climate, professors in gender studies and related fields all over Canada increasingly fear for their safety. Many, including me, are now advised to avoid publicly posting our office or classroom locations and to implement safety plans and training. This is not a healthy environment for fostering intellectual curiosity, open debate or the free exchange of ideas.
In my own work at the Islamophobic research hub, I strive to create methodologies that empower impacted communities. For instance, we're working with policy-makers, labour organizers and service providers in Muslim communities to study systemic barriers to the economic integration of Muslims in Canada. We're also examining the impacts of Islamophobic violence, such as the fatal attack on the Afzaal family in London, Ontario, and the Quebec City mosque shooting, on the mental health and identity of young Muslims. These projects centre community-based knowledge where lived experiences become a foundation for evidence-based change.
However, this kind of research is not easy to sustain under current tri-council funding structures.
This leads me to my second point Federal funding must be structured in ways that make community-academic partnerships more accessible, efficient and sustainable.
Community partnerships are heavily encouraged, but the support mechanisms are often inadequate. As someone who has been both a community partner and now a university researcher, I have seen both sides of this struggle. For example, with community partners, I co-wrote a 53-page SSHRC application for a $23,000 Connections grant to focus on the experiences of Muslim women accessing shelters. We did not receive the grant, but what stayed with me was the enormous uncompensated labour I had to request from partners already overstretched in underfunded women's shelters.
While SSHRC now allows salary research allowances for community partners, streamlining the application and modernizing its outdated portal are crucial to fostering meaningful partnerships.
The bottom line is this: Canada should fund good research. It should enable partnerships and reduce barriers. It should do so without bias or political interference. At a time when academic freedom is under threat elsewhere, we have an opportunity and a responsibility to strengthen it here.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
Thank you.
We will now proceed to Mr. Thomas.
Mr. Thomas, you will have five minutes. Please go ahead.