The federal government is tightening the screws on universities across the country to stop working with “foreign state actors who pose a risk to national security.”
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“An application for a research grant in a sensitive area will be rejected if any of the researchers involved in the project belong to a university, research institute or laboratory belonging to a military organization or to a national defense or state security organization of a foreign state actor who poses a risk to represents national security,” Ottawa said in a statement released late Tuesday afternoon.
Since 2021, the policy has only targeted military research, but now extends to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, and even the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
These semi-governmental institutions largely determine which projects are eligible for funding or not.
However, the new policy not only affects research projects funded by Ottawa in one way or another, it goes far beyond that.
Ottawa is “urging” Universities Canada and the Canadian Research Universities Group (U15) to “adopt similar policies for all of their research partnerships, particularly those in sensitive areas.”
The new directive of the Minister for Innovation, Science and Innovation, François-Philippe Champagne, should be “quickly implemented”, we promise. It was developed jointly with the Ministers for Health and Public Safety.
Secretary Champagne, who described himself as “not at all naïve”, had pledged to better protect research in Canada after a Globe & Mail poll in late January found McGill University ranked third among universities who work on more closely with the National University of Defense Technology of China.