Finance committee  We must invest in the hard sciences—in the health sciences and applied sciences. But we must invest equally in the humanities and social sciences. If the balance is so out of kilter that we aren't able to tackle the major social problems facing our society, and we aren't doing th

Finance committee  Thank you for both questions. On the literacy side, it's absolutely clear that if we look at the international surveys of adult literacy, Canada lags far behind. I would say that investments in basic adult literacy are foundational to the public interest and also to the economi

Finance committee  We have not as yet. We've certainly been in contact with the civil servants, and we have a request in for just such a meeting. We hope to have that soon.

Finance committee  Actually, no. In a sense, the SSHRC research community is in transition, and we were waiting until the announcement came before we began our own lobbying campaign. But the request went in recently, and we hope things will be favourable in terms of seeing the minister.

Finance committee  Very much so. The position we've taken--it's one that's been taken by other groups, AUCC and CAUT and so on--is very much one of looking toward an era, I suppose, of collaborative federalism. Without that sort of collaboration between the provinces and the federal government, I

Finance committee  As you know, the support for students is patchwork, quite complicated between federal and provincial jurisdictions. There are different models. I think we would put that to one side.... Let me put it differently. I think the dedicated transfer should be very much a transfer of

Finance committee  Yes indeed; thank you for the question. If you look at the last ten years, you see that the federal government has made new investment in research and development, across the board, in excess of $11 billion. And if you analyze that, you see that the proportion for the humanitie

Finance committee  Somewhat up. I think it's really important for us to set targets. If we look internationally at R and D spending as a proportion of GDP, then Canada lags behind. Sweden is at the top of the OECD rankings. We are below the OECD average of 2.25%. I think we should be number one. We

Finance committee  These are the full-time university academic researchers in the humanities and social sciences--and the fine arts as well, to some extent.

Finance committee  You would double the total amount of academics in the country.

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. As president of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, I represent the largest single segment of Canada's research community--30,000 researchers, 71 universities, and 68 associations. Included in this gr