Representatives from Canada’s three major research granting agencies appeared before a House of Commons committee Wednesday to defend how research is approved.
“No one gets funded because they are a member of a particular group or identify with a particular group. They get funded on the basis of the excellence of their proposal,” said Ted Hewitt, president of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives have been a key focus of the parliamentary committee’s study of how federal research funding criteria impacts research quality.
The three major funding agencies have diversity plans, and in some cases, require a certain number of researchers to be women, Indigenous, racialized or have disabilities.
At previous committee meetings, some academics harshly criticized the agencies’ prioritization of diversity, saying it can lead to politicalization in research.
“The promotion of diversity in gender and ethnicity at the same time that the diversity of opinion is constricted by censorship, cancellation or intellectual monocultures undermines public trust in science,” renowned Harvard University professor Steven Pinker told the committee on Sept. 15.
Pinker lamented the lack of “viewpoint diversity” on university campuses.
Diversity requirements cause qualified researchers to be overlooked for positions and may prompt some researchers to leave Canada for work in other countries, academics warned.
Some academics also raised concerns that diversity-focused research prioritized certain political views — often progressive or liberal — over others.
“The vague and shifting definition of [diversity, equity and inclusion] is a feature not a bug,” Dave Snow, a political science professor at the University of Guelph, told the committee last week.
“It enables researchers and granting agencies to hide behind mild [DEI] language while using taxpayer dollars to advance activist [DEI] research agendas.”
‘Essential to research quality’
Canada has three federal research granting organizations: the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). Altogether, they fund about $4.5 billion in research each year.
Leaders from the three main federal research granting bodies said diversity of researchers does not harm research. In fact, they said, having diverse researchers produces better research.
“Equity, diversity and inclusion are essential to research quality and impact,” said Anne-Marie Thompson, vice-president of the research grants and scholarships directorate at NSERC.
Most researchers say working with people from diverse backgrounds “brought innovation in research and brought them to results that they initially did not expect,” said Valerie Laflamme from SSHRC. “That’s excellence in research.”
Equity is more important in some areas of research than others, said Dr. Paul Hébert, president of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
“Equity matters in issues of health services and systems,” he said. “It may matter less in our approach in managing test tubes. Depending on the study and the issue, the issue of equity will be life saving for people.”
CIHR has a multi-year plan to increase diversity, equity and inclusion. More than 70 per cent of young researchers are from diverse backgrounds, Hébert told the committee.
Projects are approved on a case-by-case basis, and not with a “cookie-cutter” approach, he said. “Depending on the issue we focus on, equity takes on a very important role.”
The biggest problem with federal research right now is a lack of funding, he says.
‘Life saving’
At previous committee meetings, some academics questioned policies that require certain numbers of researchers to be women, Indigenous, racialized or have disabilities. They were particularly critical of the Canada Research Chair program’s quotas. The program provides researchers at Canadian universities with up to $1.4 million in funding over seven years.
Institutions that do not meet specific diversity requirements risk losing some research chair positions.
The requirements are the result of a federal court order enforcing a settlement in a human rights complaint. The complainants alleged the Canada Research Chair program discriminated against researchers from minority groups.
“By putting these policies in place, the intention is to attenuate systemic barriers and biases that exist so that everyone has the opportunity to participate in the research ecosystem,” said Laflamme, from SSHRC.
Hewitt, also from SSHRC, denied that diversity criteria limits the viewpoints expressed at universities.
“We work with many points of view,” he said. “We don’t apply filters to [viewpoints] and we fund the best research that exists at that point.”
The parliamentary committee requested data be provided by Oct. 16 about which research projects have been approved and denied since 2020, including information about whether researchers belonged to equity-seeking groups.
The committee will now write a report with recommendations to the government on whether to change its research funding criteria.
