Jamie Sarkonak: Commons report recommends DEI by stealth

This month, the House of Commons committee on science and research recommended a ban on diversity quotas in federal research programs, along with all references to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the granting process. But you should probably hold your cheers: that very same committee has also suggested an even tighter embrace of DEI.

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The paradoxical recommendations conclude a study on federal research granting criteria that has been underway for two-ish years. While they leave much to be desired, they at least signal that a stigma is beginning to grow around race-based policy, forcing some of its greatest advocates to retreat from their brash stances.

At present, the federal funding agencies discriminate against researchers as a matter of routine. Some grant programs, such as the Canada Research Chairs (CRC) program, operate with hard identity-based requirements as a means of fighting systemic discrimination — which in turn is a form of systemic discrimination, because it excludes whole categories of applicants on the basis of race or sex.

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In other instances, the discrimination is more subtle: some federal grants require applicants to commit to upholding DEI — amounting to forced political speech — and in general, as it’s practiced in the federal funding ecosystem, DEI is about imposing a value system where people in dominant, privileged identity groups are believed to oppress the rest of society.

So, the committee’s insistence that references to DEI be eliminated from the grant pipeline would have been much more welcome if it were paired with a recommendation to strip the essence of DEI from federal funding. Instead, it was paired with a recommendation to double down and “introduce compulsory training on equity, diversity and inclusion principles and on the ethical and societal impact of research for all funding program applicants.”

In other words, the instruction is to peel off the nuclear hazard sticker without actually removing or containing the radioactive substance at the heart of the problem.

The committee also recommended that DEI be made a mandatory element of research design in projects applying for federal funding. Finally, it recommended that federal funding agencies “create incentives for inclusive research teams and establish dedicated funding sources and incentives for projects that demonstrate fair and equitable hiring practices, whose management teams are diverse and feature collaborations with historically excluded communities.”

That is, the Commons science committee wants to ban diversity quotas from funding allocation while also forcing grant applicants to adopt DEI into their own research and hiring practices. Diversity quotas aren’t so necessary when everyone has to abide by principles that get you there anyway, right?

What we’d get, if the government followed the committee’s recommendations, is DEI by stealth.

In this way, the report was a good representation of the government’s approach to DEI and race-based policy in 2026. It’s no longer loud and proud like it was from 2019 to 2023, with officials bragging about their latest batch of DEI grants and strategies as critics are cowed into silence. But neither is it on the retreat. Instead, those promoting DEI have adopted a quieter stance, recognizing that the survival of these unpopular policies depends on people forgetting they exist.

It’s at least official that the Commons science committee has admitted the flaws of DEI. In its report, it lists several observations about DEI in the academy: it’s “discriminatory,” it’s “unpopular,” it’s repulsive to research talent and administratively burdensome — and it is “undermining public trust and confidence in federally funded research.” While this did not represent the personal views on DEI of every committee member — the Liberals in particular issued a very pro-DEI response statement — it was enough to break any illusion that DEI was a consensus issue. The flock of experts who testified to its flaws, and the evidence they brought to the table, made sure of that.

Political scientist Eric Kaufmann, for one, brought his research into Canadian perceptions of DEI. It’s not good for the DEI side, with 59 per cent of Canadians favouring a colour-blind approach to fighting racism, as opposed to the 29 per cent who want a colour-conscious approach. Whoever wrote the committee report claimed this was contradicted by an Environics study by a progressive academic which found that 56 per cent of people thought that the focus on “equity, diversity, inclusion” was a good thing. But that poll did no such thing, as it didn’t compare views on colour-blind and colour-conscious approaches.

Then, there were the personal anecdotes. One professor, UBC pyschologist Azim Shariff, gave an account of his own department’s experience with the Canada Research Chairs program’s diversity requirements, which were so onerous that they excluded “many of the most relevant and impactful scholars,” compromising the candidate pool to the point where no one could be hired.

It’s clear that the pro-DEI faction of the Commons committee hopes to steer the federal funding agencies towards a more moderate philosophy: scrub the words that attract critics like flies, stop telling researchers they’re ineligible for funding because of their race or sex — but keep the ludicrous training about the evils of white supremacy, European colonization and whatever other elements of blood libel that can be fished up and hope that the world carries on. The fight against DEI continues, but at least the movement is in retreat.

National Post

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