One story, one act of resistance at a time.
There was an item in the last federal budget that didn’t get much attention but it’s a detail that has the potential to transform Canada’s place in the world. The Canada+ Global Impact Research Talent Initiative is a $1.7 billion fund that will support the recruitment of top global researchers to Canadian universities.
Mélanie Joly, Minister of Industry says this is about ending the “brain drain”.
“While certain countries are turning their back on academic freedom and cutting research and weakening science… we are doubling down. My message to Canadians out there: It’s time to come back home.”
I am sure this is part of the initiative, but there is also a very clear strategic, larger goal at work – taking advantage of MAGA’s scorched earth war on American science and research. The Canadian government clearly understands the huge opportunity of shifting some of that enormous research power to our side of the border.
I have been writing about this issue since Trump’s White House began targeting the top universities in the country. Trump didn’t bother to shake down small time colleges, he went after the elite institutions — Cornell, Columbia, Berkeley, Yale, Harvard and the Smithsonian.
He seems determined to humiliate these institutions and force them to backtrack on research, and even in the writing of history. I described this as similar to the Nazi book burnings of 1933 in a previous essay.
Book Burners on the March | ||||||
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"Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people as well." —Heinrich Heine, 1820 | ||||||
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One of the first moves of the Nazi government was a very public book burning in Berlin’s Bebelplatz Square. The Nazis didn’t burn the books in some back alley. They did it in the very heart of German culture and academia.
The Nazis were sending a message - if they could do this at Bebelplatz Square, they could do it anywhere. Same with Trump’s attack on the Ivy League schools. If they were forced to kiss the ring, who would dare defy MAGA?
When Hitler launched his war on the universities, Germany was the global centre for research and scholarship. But the Nazi attack on education changed everything. Many of the greatest thinkers of that generation fled Germany. Those who stayed attempted to placate Nazi ideologues with research that fit the political ideology of the hate state. German academia is still recovering.
The United States was a huge beneficiary of the exodus of German academics. In many ways, the beginning of the American century can be traced to the great European thinkers who moved to the American university system. Following the war, the United States had the pick of the world’s top researchers, who came to Harvard, Cornell, Stanford, etc., to study.
But all this has changed.
Trump has declared foreign researchers a national security threat. Among the first people kidnapped off the street and arbitrarily detained were foreign research students. The United States is no longer a place that welcomes the best and the brightest. Witness the trashing of medical science research by RFK Jr.
This past fall, I spoke at the University of Regina about the need for Canada to offer itself as a haven for research and science. What is happening in the United States is not a temporary turbulence. It is a systematic attack on knowledge itself and history shows us where that road leads.
In Canada , we have our own MAGA-like politicians who would undermine education and research. One has only to look at the abysmal track record of Doug Ford, Danielle Smith and Premier Moe. Not to mention the Poilievre Conservatives who have attempted to turn universities into political punching bags with claims that the schools are “woke” or anti-free speech.
Fortunately, the federal government of Canada seems determined to make Canada a destination of choice for science and academic research. They are establishing 100 new Impact+ Research Chairs positions with a focus on advanced digital technologies, clean tech and resource value chains, environment, climate resilience, the Arctic, health, food and water security, democratic and community resilience, manufacturing, defence and dual-use technologies.
These investments will benefit institutions across this country. Unlike the United States, with its small cluster of elite Ivy League institutions, Canadian universities are more open and accessible, and the expertise being recruited would be at home in institutions across this great land.
The world is watching Canada at this time. Our determined resistance to the Trump bullying has given other nations hope. Researchers and academics will be flooding our universities with requests to be part of this new era in research and democracy.
We may be in very dark times but I am hopeful that the Canadian century has begun.
Thank you for reading Charlie Angus / The Resistance. If you’d like to upgrade to a paid subscription your support will help keep this project independent and sustainable. I’m grateful to have you here - thank you for your support.
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