This Thursday, Prime Minister Mark Carney is due to address the opening of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Guest addresses like this aren’t unheard of, but they have mostly been reserved in recent years for civil society figures focused on Ukraine, which was already a signal that something significant was to be announced, and reporting has suggested that some sort of new relationship between Canada and the European Union was in the cards.

Then on Saturday, a 5,000-word Wall Street Journal exclusive gave us a hint at what might be coming. The reporting claimed that the prime minister has spent months using his extensive European rolodex and connections to push for a deeper relations with the EU. According to the Journal, Carney even “suggested Canada take on a new title: Associate Member of the European Union.” Government sources challenged the story later in the day , saying the reporting “overstates” what is being discussed.

Carney owes all Canadians a clear explanation of what is actually on the table, but even if we don’t know for sure just yet, it’s important we have a clear eyed view about what would actually be in Canada’s interests. Getting closer to Europe and the European Union is appropriate in a world where Canada is in need of closer economic and security relationships with likeminded allies and friends, as Ottawa seeks to lessen dependence on the United States.

But this does not, and should not, mean joining the EU even in an “associate” role, even if the government is not currently pursuing anything so formal. The whole reason the government is seeking close relationships with other allies and partners is precisely because there is a newfound sense of urgency in protecting and reasserting Canadian independence. We cannot trick ourselves into giving up sovereignty to Brussels.

I am of the view that we must lessen our dependence on a much less reliable and volatile United States no matter who succeeds Donald Trump as president. A president who muses about annexation and slaps tariffs on his closest ally and biggest trading partner isn’t just an aberration, he is himself a symptom of an America that haw changed. At the same time, we cannot delude ourselves into thinking we will ever be able to entirely detach ourselves from America. They will likely remain our biggest trading partner and most important security partner.

Turning to Europe as a place we can build closer economic and defence arrangements with is a fitting a approach in the light of how relations with the U.S. have devolved. But don’t be fooled into thinking this means we must therefore join the European Union.

We still have no idea what being an “associate member” would mean, and the Wall Street Journal reporting doesn’t make that clear. There is currently no such thing as an associate member of the EU. There are other arrangements like the European Free Trade Association, which includes Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein who are not full members, but three of whom participate in the European single market via the European Economic Area, with Switzerland’s access instead coming through its own bilateral deals, and all four of whom are in the Schengen Area, meaning open borders with the EU. There are a variety of different levels of integration within the the bloc. Some countries are not in the Schengen Area like Ireland. Some are not in the monetary union and don’t use the Euro. But whatever is being proposed for Canada appears to be new.

This obscures the more useful and important question, which is not whether Canada should join the EU in some new, undefined capacity, but whether it needs to. We don’t. For instance, if we want free trade with the EU (which is not the same as being in the single market), Canada signed CETA, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, with the bloc back in 2016. A decade later, 10 member states, including France, still have not ratified it . If we want to deepen economic ties with the EU, why don’t we start here?

It might not be as flashy and sexy, but getting CETA fully ratified, deepening the defence procurement and research ties that are already underway, building out the data and satellite infrastructure both sides say they want do not require anything that changes our existing arrangements and would benefit both Canada and the EU.

But even if full, or even partial membership, is not in the cards, we should think carefully about what we are attaching ourselves to. The European Union is in many ways a remarkable political accomplishment.

The 27 member nations of the EU (and the few others closely intertwined through the EFTA) have created an economic entity that guarantees the free movement of goods, capital, services, and people — known as “the four freedoms.” The GDP of this single market is roughly 18 trillion Euros (rouglyly C$30 trillion), one of the largest economies on the planet.

More access to this market is a great idea, but let’s be honest about what full integration with that would entail.

EU member states give up a significant amount of sovereignty and national self-determination. National courts must set aside domestic law that conflicts with EU law, and governments can no longer block goods, services, or workers from other member states to protect their own industries. Environmental, energy, labour and procurement regulations must be aligned, as well. Deeper still, the customs union means Brussels alone sets tariffs and negotiates trade deals with non members, so no country can strike its own agreement with Washington or Beijing.

Eurozone members surrender monetary policy entirely to the European Central Bank and accept Brussels-enforced limits on deficits and debt, and Schengen states abolish their own border controls with each other altogether. Together these amount to one of the deepest peacetime surrenders of national control any democracy has ever voluntarily accepted. You can make the argument that these are sacrifices are worth making, but make no mistake that joining this union means sacrificing sovereignty at a level that, quite frankly, I think most Canadians divorced of our current fight with the Americans, would be very uncomfortable giving up.

While the EU might be a massive market we should want access to, it faces its own major challenges. Mario Draghi, the former president of the European Central Bank and briefly prime minister of Italy, authored a major report in 2024 that exposes how sclerotic and stagnant the EU economy has become. He found that the income gap between the EU and the United States had roughly doubled in the two decades before the report, from about 15 per cent to about 30 per cent, and that closing it would require something like 800 billion euros a year in new investment.

Two years on, only a small fraction of Draghi’s own recommendations have been fully acted on, and the International Monetary Fund now projects that high energy costs alone will trim eurozone growth by roughly half a point this year and drag on it again in 2027. The innovation numbers are just as stark: of the 147 unicorns, private startups valued at over $1 billion before they ever go public, founded in Europe between 2008 and 2021, roughly 30 per cent packed up and moved abroad, mostly to the U.S., and no European company built from scratch in the last 50 years has grown into a 100 billion euro (C$160 billion) firm, while seven American companies crossed one trillion euros ( C$1.6 trillion) in that same span.

Europe is a natural ally and a massive market, but it is not an economic powerhouse. Canada can actually help the Europeans escape this sclerotic trap, and more than anything else it would be about an energy partnership where Canada helps power an energy poor Europe. But it wouldn’t require us joining.

Cast your mind back to 2022 when, with then-German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visiting Canada, Justin Trudeau said there was “no business case” for expanding LNG exports to Europe. Germany went looking elsewhere. Canada’s first LNG Canada cargo did not leave the export terminal in Kitimat until July 2025 , years after allies had already signed contracts with Qatar and the United States, and even that cargo went to Asia, not Europe: LNG Canada is a Pacific-facing project, and the Atlantic-facing terminal that could actually have served Germany, the Quebec project Trudeau’s own government let die, was never built.

Europe needs our energy and it can be a beneficial arrangement between us and Europe. But the issue isn’t a lack of integration, its that we haven’t built the infrastructure and developed the resources needed to help power Europe, especially as Russia increasingly seems intent on provoking conflict not just in Ukraine but with EU nations. Canada spent a decade failing to build the pipelines and export terminals that would let it sell what Europe wants to buy. Selling Germany gas does not require EU membership in any capacity. It requires ports and resource infrastructure.

There is also a harder constitutional question lurking underneath all the “associate member” talk that nobody in Ottawa or Brussels seems eager to raise. Depending on what precisely “associate member” means, it could require implementation at the provincial level, or even a formal constitutional amendment with at least seven provinces signing on. Either way, most or all of the provinces would have to be fully on board with the plan. If associate membership meant accepting rules but not having any actual say in the EU or voting rights, we’d be giving up sovereignty to let rules be made in Brussels instead of Ottawa. Our goal should be become more sovereign and “maître chez nous,” not transferring sovereignty to another continent.

Perhaps subtly but most important, we must be honest with ourselves about our own identity and who we are as a country. Just after becoming prime minister, in Paris on his first foreign trip, Carney called Canada “the most European of non-European countries,” which in hindsight is revealing about the prime minister’s broader strategy and mindset. At the end of the Wall Street Journal story, a senior Canadian official apparently told the paper that “we sound like Americans, we dress like Americans, but as a society we’re much more European.”

We may increasingly feel we align with Europe more than America on questions of political values, but we should not pretend that we are not still culturally much more similar to the United States than any other country, even if we don’t like to admit it. Canada’s consumer culture, its continental supply chains, its sports leagues, its entertainment, the car-dependent suburbs and strip malls we actually build and live in reflects a country that has been thoroughly Americanized, for better and worse, since the Second World War. Wanting Canada to be more European is a perfectly respectable aspiration. Believing it already is, is wishful thinking.

None of this is an argument against getting closer to Europe. Get CETA ratified, continue to join defence and defence procurement arrangements, build more research connections, make Canada the democratic energy supplier of Europe, build underwater cross-Atlantic cables so we can build data centres for Europe, and much more. Europe is our most natural and logical partner in our quest to diversity away from the United States. But even if the Wall Street Journal overstated what Ottawa is seeking, Canada needs to be clear eyed and think now about what any membership, partial or otherwise, would actually entail. If this moment is really about sovereignty, the answer was never Washington or Brussels.

National Post

The U.S.-Canada kerfuffle took an interesting tangent this week when the Buffalo Bills announced the Barenaked Ladies would sing the Canadian national anthem on Sept. 17 at the Bills’ new and lavishly taxpayer-funded US$2.1-billion stadium. (Even that kind of money doesn’t even get you a roof, nowadays !) Everyone seemed to treat it as a good news story, which it was. Just like it was a good news story when Buffalo Sabres fans belted out O Canada when the anthem singer’s mic cut out at a game in April. (The Sabres play both anthems before all home games.)

This is the sort of relationship Canadians and Americans had, still have and, should sanity prevail, will have more of and better in the future. We can’t quit each other, in the long term, and we shouldn’t want to.

The anthems are also good business, naturally. By some estimates , roughly 15 per cent of Bills’ and Sabres’ season-ticket holders commute from Canada. But fewer Canadians crossed Niagara River bridges in June 2026 than in any non-pandemic June this century. That’s leaving a mark on the Buffalo economy . There’s no doubt travel is one of the few levers Canada has to deploy, even if certain jurisdictions — Buffalo, for example, where three-quarters of voters went for Kamala Harris in 2024 — don’t make much sense as strategic targets.

So, hang on … should Canadians be travelling to Bills games at all? For that matter, should the Barenaked Ladies be playing for billionaire Bills (and Sabres) owner Terry Pegula, a Republican fracking tycoon ? Canadian artists who’ve cancelled U.S. tours “because of Trump” have gotten good press . And Canadians love to judge each other’s civic spirit.

You mustn’t travel to the U.S., even if it’s for “a reunion with your dearest friend,” a Globe and Mail columnist informed us last year . “Canadians should not visit the U.S. unless necessary. I am not going again unless I have to for work,” a Toronto Star sports columnist wrote on X … as if “work trumps friends and family” is a concept we must all accept. Back in the Globe , Labour Day having come and gone, snowbirds were enjoined this week: “By all means, venture abroad … But for the love of country, stand in solidarity with your Canadian kin and skip the States for your leisure travel.”

Prime Minister Mark Carney seems to be of like mind. “The most powerful actions have (been) buying Canadian and travelling in Canada,” he said in a video posted this week , having not long ago returned from vacation in deepest Tuscany.

I’m glad the Bills are doing O Canada. Cross-border harmony is good, wherever we can find it. But I do think Canada can leverage sport in a funny sort of way that might really unite people from coast to coast: Instead of judging each other’s travel and consumer preferences, let’s take back the Stanley Cup.

The NHL intends to expand, again. Leading candidates reportedly include twice-failed NHL market Atlanta (whose previous franchises now play, ahem , in Calgary and Winnipeg); Phoenix, the most legendary failed hockey market this side of sub-Saharan Africa (the Coyotes now play in Salt Lake City); and Houston and Austin, which have at least never lost an NHL team before.

There’s nothing wrong with U.S. expansion, including in the sun belt: Four of the Original Six NHL teams were American, after all. But meanwhile, a 10-year-old arena in Quebec City and a newly refurbished one in Hamilton are just sitting there waiting for the NHL. If there’s no one willing to invest in a team there, I think a league that cared even a tiny bit about its product would be quite concerned that no one thinks they can sell the game to people who actually play it.

“The Stanley Cup belongs to the NHL,” Brian O’Neill, who was then one of the Cup’s two Canadian trustees (by terms stipulated by Lord Stanley himself) told the Globe in 2005. This was after a group of beer-league players challenged the NHL’s right to simply not award the Cup when a lockout shut down the season. (Annoyingly, they settled with the league under confidential terms. What was the point?)

The Cup has “belonged” to the NHL, in effect, since 1947. But legally, it’s not that simple. “The dispute over ownership of the Stanley Cup turns on a unique blend of ancient doctrines and modern rules about property rights in both physical and intangible assets,” University of Ottawa law professor Jeremy de Beer wrote about the controversy in a 2008 paper. But since Lord Stanley created the Stanley Cup trust as Canada’s governor general — i.e., as a representative of the Crown — de Beer said it was arguably never within anyone’s rights to cede de-facto control of.

I’m not suggesting we just lock the Cup in a basement. The NHL could still award it, though perhaps a repatriated and revamped Stanley Cup trusteeship might advocate for Canadian teams’ best interests in what is an inherently unbalanced league: Canadian teams generally don’t enjoy the same outrageous taxpayer subsidies as many American ones do for new arenas, and the tax burden does not work at all in Canadian teams’ favour when attracting players relative to Florida, Nevada or Texas. The NHL knows the Stanley Cup is one of its greatest brand assets, if not its greatest. I can’t imagine any other country tolerating their national sport being abused to the extent Canada tolerates it from the NHL.

The only argument I can see against at least trying to renegotiate or litigate the Stanley Cup agreement is that it’s silly and impractical. That’s good Canadian common sense to a point. But this whole trade-war situation is pretty silly. And unlike just about every other Canadian gambit in this trade war, this wouldn’t pit Canadian against Canadian. It would be an act of, or at least an attempt at, cultural rescue.

National Post
cselley@postmedia.com

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On July 30, 2025, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that Canada would recognize a Palestinian state. He was careful to explain that recognition was not unconditional.

Canada’s decision, Carney said, was predicated on commitments from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to fundamentally reform Palestinian governance, hold general elections in 2026 in which Hamas could play no part and demilitarize a future Palestinian state.

These conditions never answered the most obvious objection to Canada’s policy: Why recognize a state before the institutions capable of governing it peacefully and democratically actually exist?

Canada went ahead and did it anyway.

There is a curious double standard at the heart of Canada’s policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel is treated as a country whose leaders make choices and must live with their consequences. Palestinians are treated as a people to whom history happens.

Consider the typical diplomatic discussion surrounding the conflict. Israel must accept a ceasefire, restrain its military, halt settlement expansion, negotiate with its enemies, make territorial concessions and articulate a credible political horizon. Some of those demands are reasonable and others can be debated, but they all make it clear that Israel possesses agency.

Now, consider the expectations placed on Palestinian leaders.

Mahmoud Abbas was elected president in 2005 and has remained in office ever since, despite repeatedly promising to hold elections. Hamas spent years turning Gaza into a terrorist stronghold before launching the deadliest attack against Jews since the Holocaust. Palestinian politics remain fractured, corruption is endemic within the Palestinian Authority and its education system continues to glorify violence and deny the Jewish people’s historical connection to the land.

Yet the diplomatic dogma remains overwhelmingly focused on what everyone else should do for Palestinians. Israel should change its policies and tactics. Washington should exert more pressure on Israel. Western governments should recognize Palestine, the United Nations should confer greater legitimacy and donor countries should provide more assistance.

What, precisely, are Palestinian leaders expected to do? Expecting nothing is not allyship, it’s paternalism.

If Palestinians are entitled to sovereignty, as the Carney government believes they are, then Palestinian leaders should be responsible for building the institutions that make sovereignty viable.

They should be responsible for whether their people vote, whether public money rewards violence, whether schools prepare children for co-existence and whether their political culture treats negotiation and compromise as diplomacy or betrayal.

None of this absolves Israel of responsibility for its actions. It is held accountable for the decisions of its elected government because that is what it means to treat a nation as a sovereign political actor. Palestinians deserve the same standard.

Successful states are built on institutions, accountability, the rule of law and political leadership capable and willing to make difficult choices. Foreign governments cannot manufacture a viable Palestinian state by removing the expectations placed on the people who would govern it.

This is what makes Canada’s decision so baffling. Ottawa granted one of the Palestinians’ most important diplomatic objectives before the reforms it deemed essential to statehood had been adopted. The message was that Palestinian leaders could receive the benefits of statehood before demonstrating their willingness or ability to assume its responsibilities.

The international community speaks about Palestinian dignity and self-determination. But dignity is inseparable from agency. Treating Palestinians with dignity means recognizing they are not victims of forces beyond their control, but a people whose leaders make choices about war and peace, democracy and authoritarianism, education and incitement, corruption and good governance.

The refusal to hold those leaders accountable has real consequences. A Palestinian born when Mahmoud Abbas was elected president could now be old enough to have children without ever having voted in a presidential election. That is not an Israeli policy. It is a Palestinian political failure.

Nor should Hamas’s continued armed presence in Gaza be treated as an unfortunate fact that everyone else must accommodate. Its leaders made choices, its members committed atrocities and its continued brutality carries consequences for the society in which it operates.

A serious commitment to Palestinian statehood requires more accountability, not less.

Canada says it wants Palestinians to exercise the right of self-determination. Then it should treat them as a people capable of exercising it, with all the responsibilities that entails. Palestinians do not need the international community to expect less of them. They need it to take their aspirations seriously enough to expect more.

National Post

Aviva Klompas is CEO and cofounder of Boundless, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting antisemitism. She is also the host of the Boundless Insights podcast.

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Canada and Ukraine deepened their relationship on Thursday by signing a series of strategic partnerships primarily focused on defence. This is a good development, as the deal is structured in a way that will strengthen Ottawa’s military prowess, but more details are sorely needed to properly assess the full return-on-investment.

The enhanced alliance was announced in Calgary by Prime Minister Mark Carney and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is visiting Canada for three days. Their proposition was straightforward and commonsensical: both countries benefit by combining Canadian financing and manufacturing with Ukrainian technology and battlefield expertise.

Per the new deal, Ottawa and Kyiv will collaborate on the production of drones, counter-drone technologies and “uncrewed systems” (unmanned war robots). Such a partnership has the potential to rapidly modernize Canada’s arsenals, as four years of war have transformed Ukraine into a global leader in these domains, rivalled only by Russia.

Ukrainian drones and robots are now far more sophisticated and cost-efficient than their NATO-designed counterparts, and, furthermore, Ukrainian soldiers are uniquely experienced at deploying these assets. The advantage this confers cannot be overstated: recent war exercises have repeatedly ended with Ukrainian forces utterly dominating their NATO peers.

Western allies have been clamouring for Kyiv’s technological and strategic innovations, hoping that, through mimicry, they can turbocharge their own militaries. Over the summer, for example, the Ukrainians began exporting their drones to the United States and gave the United Kingdom access to data gathered from tens of thousands of drone flights, which will be used to train AI-enhanced systems that can resist electronic jamming.

If Carney’s deal secures similar — or more substantial — technology transfers, then it will be of immense value to Canada. Cheap and effective Ukrainian drones could revitalize a decrepit military burdened by broken and outdated equipment. They could be particularly useful for patrolling and defending our vast Arctic territories, whose sovereignty is increasingly under threat.

Yet, the news releases associated with Thursday’s deal are frustratingly vague and, if read carefully, suggest that Ukrainian technology may not be leveraged as intensely as some might assume.

In the short term, Ottawa will award $50 million in initial contracts to six Canadian suppliers, who will manufacture drones using domestic, British and Australian technology. The stated goal of this “first step” is to rapidly grow Canada’s drone arsenal — currently a paltry 2,000 units — by a factor of ten. While this endeavour is commendable and arguably overdue, it ultimately does not leverage Ukrainian innovation.

As far as Ukrainian collaboration goes, Carney’s announcements are unspecific and contain only one concrete commitment: a partnership between General Dynamics Mission Systems-Canada and “Green Tech Harvest,” a Kyiv-based drone company.

The details and budget of this partnership have not been publicly disclosed, unfortunately. How much money is Ottawa investing here? What will bilateral collaboration look like? How exactly will Canadian experts learn from their Ukrainian colleagues? It’s anyone’s guess.

Green Tech Harvest itself is also rather mysterious. Its website omits any mention of defence manufacturing and exclusively focuses on “agri-tech innovations” and “eco-friendly farm management solutions.” Yet, by searching the corporation by name and identification number, one can verify that it has, over the past year, produced drones for Ukraine, the United States and the European Union (plus Canada now, of course).

Such a client list confirms that this is a serious company that is, in all likelihood, obfuscating its public profile to maximize operational security. Yet, in any case, this opaqueness, even if understandable, leaves Canadians further befuddled. How is the public supposed to assess the value of its much-promoted drone deal if so little is known about a key Ukrainian partner?

Defence contracts obviously require a certain degree of secrecy, but within a limit. Some more details would be helpful for an initiative that has been so well-publicized and which remains inescapably political.

That being said, even if, in the worst case scenario, Canada’s direct collaboration with Ukrainian drone experts ends up being relatively limited, the deal still provides opportunities for our domestic industry to grow.

Carney has committed to giving Ukraine one third of Canada’s new drones, which means that Canadian suppliers will have countless chances to test, and iteratively improve, their wares in real-world conditions. Such practical experience is invaluable and is precisely why Kyiv has managed to become a global leader in modern warfare.

From this perspective, it might be helpful to think of the funds spent on these drones as being analogous to a research-and-development project, one that will allow Canada to proactively innovate alongside Ukrainians, rather than just following their lead.

This cost may seem high to some, but it represents only a sliver of our overall defence budget. Ottawa has, on average, provided around $1.8 billion in military aid to Ukraine each year — which is roughly three per cent of Canada’s 2026 defence budget of $62.7 billion.

Using this as an anchor figure, it seems that sending Ukraine a large number of drones would not be particularly expensive (at least in the context of national defence, which is never cheap), and would pay enormous dividends by slingslotting Canada into battle-tested modernity.

National Post

Last week, a report by Macdonald-Laurier Institute senior fellow Eric Kaufmann and co-authors detailed the high cost of the equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) quota system in academia. They showed that the prestigious Canada Research Chairs (CRC) program — a $300 million annual federal expenditure to keep research talent in the country — has sacrificed excellence in pursuit of diversity.

Specifically, the discriminatory recruitment of Black, Indigenous, and female CRCs diminished research productivity: these “equity-deserving” groups were 10 to 15 per cent less productive than whites, Asians and males after controlling for career length and discipline. They estimated that EDI discrimination costs the CRC program about $36 million every year — amounting to a 12 per cent tax to support a policy that slows science.

Yet discrimination persists despite every CRC “equity target” having been met or exceeded. For example, the 2029 quota for non-whites (the “racialized” category) is set at 22 per cent. That target was surpassed long ago, and the proportion of non-white chair holders now stands at 34 per cent.

Another study published last week found little reliable evidence for EDI quotas. This comprehensive analysis by Concordia University’s Zachary Patterson and co-authors concluded that, while science can benefit from interdisciplinarity, there is “little empirical evidence that diversity, as defined narrowly by demographic or identity diversity, improves scientific output and impact.”

While discriminatory quotas capture public attention — they’re highly visible, morally dubious and easily measurable — other, more insidious, costs of EDI are less appreciated. Foremost among them is compelled political speech.

That’s no exaggeration: scientists must personally express support for EDI to qualify for many federal research grants. Venturing even into classically liberal territory risks rejection.

I speak from experience. In 2025, my Discovery Grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) was not renewed despite receiving high scores on the scientific components of my application. The key problem was that I failed to “describe an approach to recruit diverse (Highly Qualified Personnel) and provide an inclusive training environment.”

Some of my colleagues defend EDI requirements as little more than a reasonable request for a management philosophy. Accordingly, I gave NSERC the benefit of the doubt and wrote my application under this milder reading, which allowed me to comply without pretending to believe things I do not. While making clear I objected to discriminatory EDI quotas, I proposed an intellectually open lab that welcomes people of diverse political views. I reasoned that science best flourishes when we recruit from the widest possible swathe of society, including the many Canadians who oppose EDI .

It didn’t work.

That’s because in EDI-speak, “diverse” means non-white, women and “2SLGBTQIA+”, while an “inclusive” environment protects progressive sensibilities from offence. A colour-blind lab that welcomes EDI-skeptics fails on both counts. The safest path to a research grant is to signal ideological compliance. It is unwise to distance yourself from the aspects of EDI you find objectionable.

A senior university administrator told me as much. I need not sincerely agree with EDI, I was told, but I should allow NSERC reviewers to think otherwise. In the world of EDI, that is not deceit. It is considered pragmatic — responsible, even — to keep one’s lab running, to keep training students and advancing science.

But this quiet compliance, where the gate is wide and the way is easy, leads scientists further astray: EDI culture is now normalizing deception.

I recently attended a workshop on the EDI sections of research grants. I asked how to handle the large body of empirical evidence against EDI versus the weak and discredited studies in favour of it. The answer: just cite supporting evidence. We were reminded that, as scientists, we are good at finding statistics to please reviewers.

Nobody else in the room seemed bothered. I turned back to my table, and, looking over my laptop, asked the person across from me if they thought this was okay. “Look,” they said, “every country has an ideology. Canada has chosen this one. We just have to live with it.”

Canada may well have chosen an ideology. What it should not do is make federal science funding depend on pretending the evidence agrees.

National Post