Diversity Rules Costing Canadian Research Millions

By Mata Press Service Canada’s push to make its top university research program more diverse is costing taxpayers millions of dollars a year in lost academic productivity, according to a new study. The Macdonald-Laurier Institute report says equity, diversity and inclusion policies in the Canada Research Chairs program are creating what its authors call an “equity-excellence trade-off.” It estimates the cost at about $36 million a year, or roughly 12 per cent of the program’s $300-million annual budget. The report is likely to add fuel to the debate over whether race and gender targets help universities become fairer or weaken merit-based hiring. Researchers Eric Kaufmann, Leif Rasmussen and Jonah Davids examined Canada Research Chair appointments from 2016 to 2025. They compared researchers using the h-index, a common academic measure that looks at both the number of papers a scholar has published and how often those papers have been cited by others. The study found that East and Southeast Asian research chairs had the highest average h-index, at 36. White scholars followed at 34, South Asians at 33 and Middle Eastern and North African scholars at 31. Hispanic scholars averaged 26, Black scholars 23 and First Nations scholars 15. Women averaged 28, compared with 38 for men. The report says those differences remained even after researchers took into account factors such as academic discipline and career length. It also found an important difference among racialized researchers. More than half of the decline in the share of White Canada Research Chairs over the past decade came from increased appointments of Asian and Middle Eastern academics. The authors found that increase had no significant positive or negative effect on overall academic productivity. Instead, the report links the productivity gap mainly to the increased appointment of women, Black and Indigenous scholars. Its statistical models found that female appointments were associated with 5.8 fewer current h-index points than male appointments. Black or Indigenous appointments were associated with 3.4 fewer points than White or Asian appointments. At the time researchers received their chairs, the gaps were 3.2 points for women and 3.6 points for Black or Indigenous scholars. The authors then put a dollar figure on those differences. They estimate that about $5,000 in federal funding represents one h-index point. Using that calculation, they estimate an average productivity shortfall of about $22,500 for a female appointment and $17,500 for a Black or Indigenous appointment. The report describes that as a 12-to-15-per-cent cost, or “tax,” on research output. Between 2015 and 2025, women’s share of Canada Research Chair appointments rose from about 30 per cent to 60 per cent. The share of Black and Indigenous appointees increased from about two per cent to between 10 and 15 per cent. Compared with the makeup of the program in 2015, the authors estimate those changes reduced annual research productivity by the equivalent of $18 million. Using 2000 as the starting point, the estimated annual loss rises to $24 million. The Canada Research Chairs program was created in 2000 to help universities attract and keep leading researchers. Tier 1 chairs are aimed at internationally recognized senior researchers and are worth about $200,000 a year for seven years. Tier 2 chairs are aimed mainly at younger and emerging researchers and are worth about $100,000 a year for five years. Canada’s three federal research agencies together distribute about $4.5 billion a year in research funding. The push for greater diversity in research chairs grew after complaints that women, visible minorities, Indigenous people and people with disabilities were underrepresented. A 2017 settlement required universities to meet representation targets. Ottawa introduced an EDI action plan in 2018, tougher targets in 2019 and stronger enforcement rules in 2021. Universities that failed to meet the targets could lose research chairs or face limits on future appointments. The changes have reshaped the program. By 2025, women and other gender-equity-seeking groups accounted for 61 per cent of Canada Research Chairs. Racialized researchers made up 40 per cent, Indigenous academics 5.1 per cent and people with disabilities 16 per cent, according to figures cited in the study. The report, however, includes an important qualification. The researchers say they found no statistical evidence that the stronger equity rules introduced after 2017 made the productivity gap worse at the time researchers were appointed. They suggest similar hiring patterns may already have been in place before the tougher rules were formally introduced. The authors also acknowledge that the h-index has limits. Older researchers usually have higher scores because they have had more time to publish papers and collect citations. Scores also vary widely by field. Health researchers had a median h-index of 40 and science and engineering researchers 36, compared with 17 for those in the social sciences and humanities. The study also did not have information on factors that could affect academic output, such as child-care responsibilities, family background or whether scholars came from families already connected to universities. The authors say the reasons behind racial and gender differences in publication output are outside the scope of the study. There is another limitation. The federal database did not provide ethnicity for individual chair holders. The researchers estimated ethnicity using artificial intelligence, surname databases and manual checks of academic profiles. The report also looks at the type of research being funded. It says EDI-related language in Canada Research Chair descriptions has roughly doubled since 2016. The use of such terms was much higher in the social sciences and humanities than in health, science and engineering. Among 55 new Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council chairs in 2025, the study found an average of 1.9 EDI-related terms in each research description. It also found that 28 per cent contained language the authors classified as activist. The report estimates that between $10 million and $20 million a year is being spent on research it considers ideologically driven. Across the three main federal granting agencies, the authors say the broader cost of EDI-related hiring and research could exceed $100 million a year, although that estimate goes beyond the Canada Research Chairs data alone. The authors want Ottawa to remove diversity targets, EDI statements and targeted hiring rules from federal research programs. They also want research funding to focus more heavily on academic merit and research output. Top news