Following from five previous posts on the impacts on research arising from the structure of funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), I have had at least one reaction from a member of Canada’s Federal Parliament. Incidentally, the last of that series of posts can be seen here, with the posts previous to that listed there.

The federal member of parliament for my area (I will not name either the area or the MP), belongs to the Bloc Québécois, the federal wing of the Quebec sovereignty movement. Having exchanged some correspondence concerning SSHRC he/she has agreed that SSHRC funding, a federal program, should be devolved to the provinces (“Nous croyons aussi que les fonds du SSHRC devraient aller aux provinces”).

Hopefully, slowly but surely, we can start to make some room for this issue.

To grossly summarize, my contention was that funding for education in Canada is a provincial matter, including higher education, and that SSHRC involves federal trespass on provincial territory. I also argued that the funding reinforces provincial inequalities, and that both aspects appear to go against either the letter or the spirit of laws and government policies regulating education, and access to education.