Time to stop funding all this waste. Taxpayers should have the final say through votes on the internet. Politicians, Bureaucrats and academics should have no say.
From grocery carts to selfies, intersectional piano curriculums to gender equity bicycles, the federal government is forcing you to fund academics’ absurd pet projects.
The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council is a federal agency that blows more than $1 billion every year and you won’t believe some of the absurd studies it forces you to pay for.
We also caught the federal and provincial governments forcing you to fund a book publisher that’s pushing fringe political propaganda.
But it’s not all bad news in this week’s Taxpayer Waste Watch. We just launched a legal fight against the government’s gun ban and confiscation scheme.
Franco
Feds force you to pay for absurd research grants
Ever wonder how long a grocery cart lives? How about what Peruvian rock stars think about gender politics? Or whether bicycles are gender equitable?
The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council is a little-known federal slush fund for academics. It burns through more than $1 billion of your money every year.
The government claims the SSHRC-funded studies provide “insights on the issues that matter most to Canadians.”
We’ll let you be the judge if the government is funding the studies that “matter most” to you.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation dug through government records and found the SSHRC bankrolling countless bizarre projects.
The SSHRC spent $105,000 studying the “birth, life and death” of a grocery cart. Seven years and all that funding later, and the study still isn’t complete, according to Simon Fraser University’s website.
The government also handed out $20,000 for a study on the gender politics of Peruvian rock music. It focuses on “feminist and queer perspectives.”
Then there’s the $94,000 the SSHRC poured into a study about the “rhetoric of the selfie.”
The study includes “fat fashion photography on Instagram,” “social justice selfies” and selfies that “violate social norms.”
“Basically, I fart around on the internet for most of my teaching and research,” the researcher said.
Taxpayers also paid $21,000 for We Are All Astronauts, a project about “speculative futures.” Instead of publishing findings, the researchers curated an art exhibit on how to “move forward” through what they call the “wicked problem” of climate change.
The CTF identified dozens of wacky SSHRC research grants. Here are some more studies your tax dollars are paying for:
- Cycling Towards Change: Advancing Mobility Justice, Gender Equity, and Sustainable Development through Bicycles ($24,500)
- Learning From Ice ($50,000)
- She's Still Sounding: Working towards a gender inclusive and intersectional piano curriculum ($17,500)
- Teens' self-fashioning of sexual and gender identities in online Harry Potter fan communities ($7,778)
Maybe next year the government will fund a study on how taxpayers manage to keep a straight face reading this list.
Your tax dollars fund Marxist books
A publishing house is taking your tax dollars to push fringe political propaganda.
Fernwood Publishing took $306,900 from the federal government since 2020. It also took $135,000 from Nova Scotia taxpayers and $86,250 from Manitoba taxpayers. The publisher itself claims to be “politically driven, not profit driven.”
One of Fernwood’s recent titles, Red Flags: A Reckoning with Communism for the Future of the Left, is tagged on Amazon under “Communist & Socialist Ideologies” and “Marxism Philosophy.”
Despite the government handouts, the book currently ranks #472 and #82 in each category, respectively. No one has left any reviews on Red Flags’ Amazon listing.
Other Fernwood titles include:
- I’ll Get Right On It – a poetry collection about “working life in the climate crisis”
- Openings and Closures: Socialist Strategy at a Crossroads – exploring what actions socialists should take in 2025
- We Can Do Better – a book on “political and social change that fuses critical Marxism with insights from anti-racist queer feminism”
If someone wants to buy that kind of book, fine, but you shouldn’t be forced to fund it.
Publishers should make money by selling books Canadians want to read, not by cashing taxpayer cheques.
Taxpayers launch ground-breaking court fight to uncover hidden gun ban costs
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is taking the federal government to court to find out how much Prime Minister Mark Carney’s federal gun confiscation scheme will cost you.
The first step: Go to court to compel the Information Commissioner to rule on a long-delayed access-to-information complaint.
We filed an access-to-information request back in 2023 seeking the costs of the gun ban and confiscation scheme. But the government only released a fraction of the records.
The CTF filed a complaint in April 2024 to uncover the full price tag of the gun grab.
The commissioner hasn’t produced any hint of when Canadians might finally see the numbers.
So your lawyers at the CTF are asking the court to compel the information commissioner to actually produce a report and push for transparency.
The government is spending your money targeting law-abiding Canadian firearm owners.
Police officers, including the union that represents the Mounties, say the scheme won’t make Canada safer. So it won’t work, but it will cost a lot of money, so you deserve to see the real numbers.
Stay tuned. We’re going to keep fighting. And we will keep you updated on this court challenge.
VIDEO: Political parties taking MILLIONS from you
Political parties across the country are helping themselves to millions of your tax dollars.
Now Ontario Premier Doug Ford is making their province’s political welfare scheme permanent.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation crew puts the spotlight on political welfare in the first edition of our new series, Out of Ottawa. You can watch (and share) the video by clicking the link below.
WATCH: taxpayer.us1.list-manage.com
Taxpayer reading list
If you’re looking for more reading on taxpayer issues, we’ve got you covered.
Mark Carney shrugs off debt problem with more borrowing: taxpayer.us1.list-manage.com
Ottawa should stop using misleading debt measure to justify deficits: taxpayer.us1.list-manage.com
Billed $173,574 in nine days: taxpayer.us1.list-manage.com
Taxpayers pay almost $35,000 for city podcast with about 81 subscribers: taxpayer.us1.list-manage.com
Ford continues to pile debt onto Ontarians: taxpayer.us1.list-manage.com
Political fools: Premier David Eby: taxpayer.us1.list-manage.com
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