By Dave Snow
February 4, 2025
Executive Summary
Higher education in Canada has reached a tenuous moment. For too long, it has focused on “equity, diversity, and inclusion” (EDI) at the expense of research excellence. This has occurred alongside a growing lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty and concerns over the erosion of academic freedom in Canada.
This report shows how EDI in its “Mild,” “Moderate,” and “Activist” forms has come to dominate both Canadian academia and government in general. Specifically, it reveals how EDI has taken root at Canada’s federal research granting agencies (NSERC, CIHR, and SSHRC), whose combined budget is $3.95 billion and growing.
And while much of the EDI is either Mild (focused on broad, vague generalities without specific action) or Moderate (promoting specific equity-driven policies such as affirmative action) there is also a significant strain of Activist EDI that is pushing for sweeping reforms and explicitly seeking to advance the goals of critical social justice activism.
In Canada, EDI is currently taking up far too much focus in each of the granting agencies. Rather than prioritizing research excellence, they are too often promoting and even rewarding political activism. This EDI agenda is promoted through a host of initiatives, including:
• A Tri-Agency “EDI Action Plan.”
• Specialized grants on EDI-related topics.
• Grants and award criteria that prioritize funding on the basis of race, gender, and other identity characteristics.
• CIHR’s new definition of research excellence that encourages research that is “anti-racist, anti-ableist, and anti-colonial in approach and impact.”
• Mandatory diversity and bias training modules for applicants and peer reviewers.
• Ubiquitous terminology and guidelines that nudge applicants towards including EDI considerations in their applications.
The net effect has been to harm the perception of political independence and unbiased research that is crucial to any research funding agency. The harm is not yet irreparable — but reform is necessary.
This report offers several solutions to reform the federal granting agencies.
First and foremost, the agencies should commit to political and ideological neutrality. This means removing references to EDI from granting agency guidelines, eliminating EDI focused grants, and removing “equity targets” and any preferential awards.
The federal government should not seek to ban EDI-driven research outright – EDI focused research should continue to contribute to the marketplace of ideas. However, EDI-focused researchers should be required to make the case as to why their research is deserving of scarce taxpayer resources dedicated to objective knowledge creation, just as all other researchers do.
The influence of Activist EDI continues to spread throughout academia. However, the granting agencies have not yet been “taken over” by Activist EDI. Especially with respect to major grants and awards, most of the guidelines and policies at the granting agencies continue to promote research excellence, and the focus on EDI tends to be of the Mild or Moderate variety. The proportion of major grants awarded to projects using Activist EDI language, while higher than it should be, remains small in relative terms. Accordingly, there is significant scope for reforms that could remove EDI from the agencies’ priorities.
Unfortunately, there is little sign that the current federal government — under whom so much of the EDI push began — is interested in rolling back EDI. However, there is no reason why any future government needs to maintain the ubiquitous focus on EDI at federal granting agencies. Thankfully, there are signs of a pushback happening within academia, and recent surveys indicate that Canadians do not support Activist EDI and even the Moderate EDI of affirmative action. In the end, academia should reward innovation, be fuelled by research excellence, and always challenge ideas in the name of free expression.
Read the full paper here:
