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Tories axe academic freedom
In short: Canada's SSHRC/CRSH, the federal government's organ funding social sciences research, will now be required to fund 'business-related research'.
Business focus fixed for SSHRC
9 MARCH 2009 - 11:19PM
Scott Fenwick, News Staff
A change in the federal government’s policy toward research funding has prompted accusations from university researchers that academic freedom in Canada is being compromised.
The controversy stems from the wording of the January federal budget concerning the government’s treatment of its arm’s-length funding towards research-granting councils.
A provision in the budget document calls for giving $17.5 million in scholarships to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
However, the budget document also stated that “Scholarships granted by [SSHRC] will be focused on business-related degrees.”
Penni Stewart, president of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, in an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper on the association’s website, called on the government to stop trying to influence research.
“The world’s most important scientific discoveries have typically come from basic research, driven by researchers’ quest for knowledge, with a scientific peer-review process making decisions about what areas and what research to fund,” she wrote.
The federal New Democratic Party has also launched their own campaign against the business-related degree provision stated in the budget, prompting them to start an online petition surrounding the issue.
“Having a government tell a peer-reviewed research body that stands for academic freedom what academic discipline they should focus their funds on is fundamentally wrong,” said Niki Ashton, the NDP critic for postsecondary education, in a conference call with campus media outlets last week.
Ashton also noted that, despite the scholarships, the government will cut a total of $147.9 million from the budgets of SSHRC and two other federal granting agencies over the next three years.
The budget document states that the money saved from the “streamlining” will be used to support repairs at postsecondary institutions, as well as funding graduate internships and scholarships.
Ashton added that he has spoken with the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA) and the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) on the issue. She said that both groups share the concern toward academic freedom.
Currently, the University of Alberta Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) isn’t aligned federally with any organization, and President Ben Whynot feels that their response to the recent budget confusion has been compromised.
“That’s been an obstacle in the GSA’s ability to respond effectively to federal decisions like this,” he said. “Greater federal presence is something that the organization has to look at in the future.”
Whynot explained that it’s not actually clear what the change in funding seems to be. A clarification posted on the SSHRC website on 28 February stated that “the additional scholarships will increase support for graduate students researching business-related areas,” a difference from “business-related degrees,” as the original budget document stated.
“If the new allocation of scholarships is going to business-related degrees, that’s going to cutout or limit a lot of excellent research in fields that just aren’t in the actual [School] of Business,” Whynot said.
As of press time, SSHRC President Chad Gaffield was unavailable for comment.
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