Over 5,000 researchers oppose order to share 25 years of federal grant applicant data

Dr. Gaynor Watson-Creed, an associate dean at Dalhousie University’s medical school, is seen in a handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Handout - Michelle Doucette Photography (Mandatory Credit)

TORONTO — More than 5,000 researchers have signed an open letter pushing back against a parliamentary committee order that they say draws parallels with the U.S. government’s crackdown on equity, diversity and inclusion funding in health and science research.

The Standing Committee on Science and Research adopted a motion on Oct. 1 requiring health and science grant institutions to share disaggregated data on all student and faculty grant applications submitted between 2020 and 2025.

The span of data requested was later expanded by the committee from five years to the last 25 years.

The information requested includes applicant demographics and equity, diversity and inclusion questionnaire responses, which the committee says is needed for its study into federal funding criteria.

Abiding by the request would also identify the members of the evaluation committee, comments, opinions, scores assigned, outcome of the application and the amount awarded.

“Five years is too short to identify real trends. By analyzing 25 years of data, we obtain a much more complete and reliable view of the evolution, which allows us to distinguish between occasional fluctuations and fundamental changes,” Bloc Québécois MP Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, vice president of the committee, said in an emailed statement.

The deadline to submit the information was Tuesday, in an Excel spreadsheet.

Blanchette-Joncas said the objective of the motion is to determine whether the criteria federal councils use to award grants “intentionally or unintentionally creates imbalances between disciplines, languages, or institutions” that impact “research excellence in Canada.”

According to a transcript of the committee meeting last month, Blanchette-Joncas questioned whether applying EDI criteria to research funding prioritized “ideological considerations” over “academic freedom.”

The committee’s request applies to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

The funding councils said Wednesday that they submitted as much data as possible by the deadline, while respecting the Privacy Act, along with their “commitment to upholding the integrity of the peer review process.”

“We provided details on funded applications that are already disclosed online — including researcher names, affiliations, project summaries and funding amounts — and aggregated EDI data for funded and unfunded applications so that individuals cannot be identified,” CIHR media relations said in a written statement.

The committee’s specific request is for disaggregate data — a raw and more detailed format than aggregate data’s broader, high-level overview typically used to identify trends.

Dr. Gaynor Watson-Creed, an associate dean at Dalhousie University’s medical school who signed the open letter, said the information that the committee needs for its stated purpose is already publicly available as aggregate data.

She suggests this appears to be a “data mining expedition” in which a person sifts through a data set to see if it answers the question they have, instead of asking the question first and collecting the data after to avoid bias.

“It looks like the committee is looking to prove something that they already believe, rather than look objectively at the data to see what it does say,” Watson-Creed said.

Blanchette-Joncas said the goal of this motion is not to target the scientific community.

“This is not an exercise in interference, but rather in transparency, fairness, and consistency in the management of public funds. As a member of Parliament, it is my job to hold public bodies accountable,” he said in his email Tuesday.

However, thousands of academics who signed the open letter say they feel targeted and that the committee has become an arena to wage a battle against equity, diversity and inclusion in research.

“This motion is incredibly damaging, unscientific in its approach, unethical, and puts minoritized researchers and graduate students at risk.”

Ardath Whynacht, an associate professor of sociology at Mount Allison University, drafted the open letter Thursday night with colleagues. Within days, the letter received 2,000 signatures and began crashing.

Whynacht said this unprecedented access to personal data impacts a massive number of Canadians, whether they worked in a lab or merely applied for graduate funding. She said their disability status, sexual orientation, place of employment, and confidential review comments will be shared with the committee.

“We have no idea how this data is going to be stored. We don’t know who is going to be able to access it. And frankly, every Canadian should be scared that the attitude of our MPs towards the private, confidential and sensitive data of Canadian citizens can just be accessed on a political whim with no clear justification.”

Hannah Alberga, The Canadian Press