Canadian Taxpayers Federation Slams Federal Spending on “Outlandish” Research Grants

By Steven Sukkau, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Winnipeg Sun

From grocery carts to selfies and Peruvian rock music, a national taxpayer watchdog says Canada’s federal research grants are funding “bizarre and irrelevant” projects at the expense of taxpayers.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) reviewed thousands of pages of federal records and says the government’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), which costs over $1 billion annually, has bankrolled projects that “don’t sound like studies that matter most to Canadians.”

“Studies about grocery carts, selfies, online Harry Potter fan communities and intersectional piano curriculums don’t sound like studies that matter most to Canadians like the government claims,” said CTF Federal Director Franco Terrazzano in a recent release.

Among the most eye-catching grants was a $105,000 award for Cart-ography: tracking the birth, life and death of an urban grocery cart, led by Simon Fraser University’s Kate Elliot. Her study explores “the relationships between carts and the humans who design, assemble, use and repurpose them.”SSHRC also granted $20,000 to University of British Columbia researcher Fabiola Bazo for Gender Politics of Peruvian Rock Music, a project that “theorizes music as an extension of sensual/sexual practices and dynamics of power.”Another $94,000 went to Rhetoric of the Selfie, a University of Waterloo study by Aimée Morrison examining “social justice selfies.

“Researchers are getting buckets of cash from taxpayers and they still can’t get their homework done,” said Terrazzano. “The SSHRC seems to be little more than a slush fund so academics can work on their pet projects that nobody reads.”

The SSHRC’s $1 billion annual cost is in addition to $17 billion the federal government transfers to provinces each year through the Canada Social Transfer, funding intended for post-secondary education, social services, and childcare, and billions more spent directly by provinces. 

“Taxpayers deserve to know their money is going toward research that actually improves lives, not niche academic vanity projects,” Terrazzano said.