The CAUT reports that Minister Gary Goodyear, who holds responsibility for science and technology, threatened to withhold federal budget funding to the SSHRC over its support of a controversial academic conference.
CAUT Reports SSHRC Funding Threatened Over Conference Support
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Actually
the headline says that. The quote from the email talks about withholding increased funding for SSHRC.
Does it matter?
Either way, SSHRC gets the wrong end of the deal.
@Bytowner
Does it matter? In a sense, it does. What I understood from the headline, and from the writeup above, lead me to believe that he was threatening to cut off all funding (i.e. a 100% decrease) rather than a 0% increase. These are very different things, akin to a wage freeze vs being fired.
Let’s say the government gives them $1M, and they were requesting an additional $100K for next year.. The writeup here, and in the first para of the linked article “threatened to withhold federal budget funding to the SSHRC” implies that he threatened to give them a budget of $0. Nada. Zilch.
However, the article’s statement “and is so serious that it will make it hard for the Minister to recommend increased funding for SSHRC in the next budget” means that, instead of the $1.1M that they asked for, they get $1M.
Do they get the wrong end of the deal? It could argued yes. However, given the budgetary flak the government is under, one shouldn’t expect an increase in funding. The funding increase could be refused even if this wasn’t an issue.