The federal Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) is wasting taxpayers’ money by funding “irrelevant” research that most Canadians don’t care about, says the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF).

The CTF’s analysis of the recipients for SSHRC’s February 2026 Insight Development Grants competition shows the research topics being funded this year include: ancient temple brewers; Arctic climate comics; low-carbon videogames; and former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s speeches.

“Studies about climate comics and the state of Canadian dancefloors don’t sound like studies that matter most to Canadians like the government claims,” Franco Terrazzano (photo at left), CTF federal director, said in a statement. “A government that can find $30,987 for temple brewers in ancient Mesopotamia can find savings for Canadian taxpayers.”

SSHRC will cost taxpayers $1.4 billion this year, according to the Main Estimates, the CTF said. SSHRC “supports research and research training in the social sciences and humanities.”

However, SSHRC actually invests about $570 million annually in social sciences and humanities researchers and students, said Sylvie Lamoureux (photo at right), chief operating officer and vice-president, research, at SSHRC.

“The balance of our annual budget (approximately $1 billion) is invested in tri-agency institutional programs administered by SSHRC on behalf of Canada’s three federal research funding agencies,” she said in an email to Research Money.

SSHRC’s mandate is to promote and support postsecondary research and research training in the humanities and social sciences, Lamoureux said.

“This research explores all aspects of human thought and behaviour. It trains and develops the next generation of leaders, thinkers and innovators and equips them with the crucial skills necessary to solving the biggest challenges facing society while also seizing our greatest opportunities,” she said.

The diversity of topics funded by SSHRC is in many ways a reflection of the diverse interests across Canadian society, Lamoureux said. “We’re proud to support an extremely broad spectrum of research topics which helps foster a rich Canadian research ecosystem.”

The federal government says SSHRC-funded research provides “informs new knowledge insights on the issues that matter most to Canadians.”

However, “many of the research topics are unlikely to resonate with most Canadians,” Terrazzano said.

For example, this year SSHRC gave Concordia University professor Antonia Hernández $99,850 for a study called A Liquid Frontier: Water Governance through Choral Storytelling. 

Hernández’s previous research on Chile’s water crisis imagined water having constitutional rights and included plans for a manifesto and fictional treatise. Co-applicant for this year’s SSHRC grant, Mark Sussman, is a theatre professor who specializes in puppetry, the CTF said.

SSHRC gave Kara Stone, assistant professor at Alberta University of the Arts, $37,275 for a study called Greenhouse: Low-Carbon Game Jam.  Stone previously built a solar-powered server on her apartment balcony to host “low-carbon videogames.

SSHRC gave University of Ottawa-based professor Kyle Conway $43,693 to study the “contested meaning” of former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s speeches. Conway will analyze 326 Trudeau speeches, tracking how the former prime minister used terms including “feminist,” “reconciliation,” “protest” and “freedom.”

SSHRC also spent $78,623 studying the “state of the dancefloor in Canada,” $79,999 on “nasal harmony in Amazonian languages,” and $88,591 studying Arctic climate comics, the CTF said.

SSHRC also gave Lisa Coulthard of the University of British Columbia (UBC) $70,529 to study the “sounds of horror cinema.” SSHRC has given Coulthard, who currently holds a SSHRC Insight Grant studying the “fight scene in cinema,” four other grants in the past, according to UBC’s website. 

CTF accuses SSHRC of being “a subsidy for academics to work on their pet projects”

Though the government says SSHRC-funded research provides “insights on the issues that matter most to Canadians,” taxpayers paid for at least 50 research projects focused on topics in other countries, the CTF noted. Those grants cost taxpayers nearly $3.9 million. 

The projects include $93,467 to create a digital edition of a 1908 book about Sri Lankan art, $65,833 to study Western-style sweets in “modern Japan and beyond,” and $30,987 for a study on “struggling temple brewers in sixth century BCE [Before Common Era] Mesopotamia.” 

“SSHRC is little more than a subsidy for academics to work on their pet projects that nobody else will read,” Terrazzano said. Referring to a previous SSHRC-funded study, he added: “Just because nobody will voluntarily pay to study the birth, life and death of a grocery cart, that doesn’t mean taxpayers should be forced to.”

But Michael Rowell, director of policy at U15, pointed out in a LinkedIn post that the 50 SSHRC-funded projects in other countries together total $3.9 million, or one percent of SSHRC’s core grants.

“As Canada diversifies its trade and builds new economic and security partnerships, we need people who understand other countries’ languages, cultures, histories, and political and legal systems. That expertise cannot be built overnight when a trade mission is booked. It comes from long-term investment,” Rowell said.

SSHRC’s Insight Grants have two funding streams. Stream A offers grants of $10,000 to $125,000; Stream B offers grants of $125,000 to $500,000. Both streams are for grants lasting two to five years.

Lamoureux noted that SSHRC grants and scholarships are submitted through eligible post-secondary institutions and awarded through a competitive process of independent merit review designed to ensure the highest standards of excellence, and impartiality of process.

Independent merit review at SSHRC, as in the case of other federal research funding agencies, adheres to internationally recognized best practices as the fairest, transparent and most effective way to allocate public funds to research. 

Research projects and topics can sometimes be considered controversial, but SSHRC has a duty to respect the principle of academic freedom, as well as the peer review process, which independently assesses the academic merit of funding proposals, Lamoureux said.

SSHRC’s current $1.4 billion budget is on top of the $18 billion the federal government sends to the provinces through the Canada Social Transfer every year, the CTF said.

The Canada Social Transfer is the federal transfer to the provinces for “post-secondary education, social assistance and social services, and early childhood development and early learning and childcare.”

SSHRC’s funding is also on top of what provincial governments spend on postsecondary education themselves. For example, the Alberta government will spend about $7 billion on advanced and postsecondary education this year.

SSHRC has been funding unusual and irrelevant research for years, Terrazzano said. 

The funding agency previously spent $105,000 examining the “birth, life and death” of a grocery cart (referring to $105,000 in funding awarded to a Simon Fraser University study by Kathleen Elliott in 2018), $20,000 on a study called Gender politics in Peruvian rock music, and  $17,500 on a study about “sexual consent to heterosexual casual sex among young adults living in Jasper.”

Elliott’s study, which documented the life cycle of grocery carts, exposing the relationship between carts and the humans who design, assemble, use and repurpose them, was her doctoral research.

The SSHRC-funded study about sexual consent to heterosexual casual sex among young adults living in Jasper, conducted through the University of Alberta by researcher Melanie Beres, aimed to improve sexual assault prevention education. Beres said Jasper was chosen because of the high rates of casual sex and drinking.

Journalist David Climenhaga said in his blog, Alberta Diary, that Beres’s research points to the way male and female desires are treated and valued differently in our society – and how that can lead to sexual violence.

Climenhaga, who noted that six of the seven academic works named by the CTF in a similar critique of SSHRC-funded humanities research in 2014, were authored by women.

The “CFT’s frat-boy humour in the service of neoliberal economics and its apparent view that any topic sensitive to women’s rights is inappropriate for government support reveals both sloppy research and a nasty bullying streak on the part of the organization, whose field operatives singled out the work of individual young academics for ridicule and public contempt,” Climenhaga wrote.

Beres told Climenhaga that her thesis research has been used to inform and shape sexual violence prevention programming in Canada and New Zealand.

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