OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) – Canadian MPs learned that $4.5 billion a year in tax money is funding research grants for “far left” activists throughout multiple Canadian universities, according to one professor.
David Freeman, a professor of economics at Simon Fraser University, called out the reality that most Canadian universities are mostly run by “activist” and “far left” faculty whose “methods” are prone to “bias.”
Freeman, as noted by Blacklock’s Reporter, said it is a “problem” that needs to be addressed.
“Activist faculty are almost universally left, to the far left, in their politics, and advocacy-oriented scholarship methods are prone to the influence of researcher biases, views, and morals,” he told MPs during a recent House of Commons science committee meeting.
“I am not talking about your Liberal voter, but people who are on the far left,” he added.
Freeman was questioned by Conservative MP Vincent Ho, who asked him for “examples of that far left activism.”
In reply, Freeman said it is “Marxist scholarship or critical race theory,” and in his view, the “lack of political balance among advocacy-oriented researchers risks social buy-in for universities as institutions.”
“Is it legitimate for a broad spectrum of Canadian taxpayers to fund left and far left advocacy under the guise of research funding? I think the answer is no. But this is an exceptionally tricky problem,” he said.
Freeman noted that in Canadian universities the “ideological imbalance,” or “cancel culture” that he said has been “documented in various sources,” are really “deep problems if we want universities to be places that promote truth.”
Freeman also told MPs that there is no “easy way” to safeguard research funding to “remain independent and resilient.” He noted that the reality is “depoliticizing academia” is a hard task.
Numbers from the science committee in a 2024 report, Distribution of Federal Funding Among Canada’s Post-Secondary Institutions, estimate that “around $4.5 billion” is spent every year on campus research.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, Canada’s universities, under former Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and now under successor Mark Carney, promised $110 million to fund DEI projects, many of which concern Canadian post-secondary institutions.
Indeed, LifeSiteNews recently reported on Trudeau’s Liberal government spending over $30 million on DEI-affiliated contracts among many federal ministries since January 2019.
That led to an increase in woke ideology creeping into all parts of society. As LifeSiteNews reported recently, the University of British Columbia (UBC) Vancouver campus posted an opening for a research chair position but has essentially barred non-homosexual white men from applying for the job.
By contrast, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has promised if every elected to power he would scrap government funding of “radical political ideologies” in higher education.
