In a sharp critique of public spending on academia, columnist Matthew Lau has highlighted what he calls a significant waste of Canadian taxpayer money on research projects with little practical benefit. The focus of his argument is a series of grants awarded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) in 2025.
Questionable Projects Funded by Public Money
Lau points to specific SSHRC-funded initiatives as prime examples of misallocated funds. The most prominent is a project receiving $72,746 to study "how emotions influence paid and unpaid climate activities across genders." This is not an isolated case, according to Lau's examination of the grant winners.
Other cited projects include:
- $28,626 for "What is Queer Food?: the Event Series"
- $13,766 for "New Approaches to German Opera, 1650-1820"
- $64,922 for "Performing the 'Asian Woman': Travelling Asian Performers on Canadian Variety Circuits"
- $24,940 for "Marxism in Translation and the Demands of Decolonization"
- $50,000 for "Relational Solidarities: Fostering Land-Informed Connections Across Anti-Colonial Struggles"
- $63,420 for "Exploring student professionals’ experiences of transformative learning in a workshop addressing weight bias."
Lau's fundamental question is why the Canadian public should be forced to fund such niche academic pursuits.
The Three Types of Research and the Case for Funding
The columnist breaks down research into three categories to evaluate the justification for government support. First is basic or fundamental research, which produces pure knowledge for public use but isn't easily commercialized; this may qualify as a public good. Second is applied research, aimed at creating marketable technologies or products.
The third category, where Lau places the listed SSHRC projects, is "useless research." He defines this as work that has no use to anyone except the researchers themselves, driven by personal interest in either the topic or the grant money. This category, he argues, does not deserve taxpayer funding under any circumstances.
The Private Sector vs. Government in Research Funding
Lau extends his criticism beyond obviously niche projects. He contends that even the case for government funding of useful research—basic or applied—is shaky. For applied research, his argument is straightforward: the private sector can do it better.
He echoes a core principle of fiscal criticism: "Like other government spending, research spending by people who did not earn the money being spent and bear no cost if it is wasted is a recipe for waste." Developing marketable products is a commercial enterprise best left to private investment, where accountability for results is inherent.
To support this, Lau cites Terence Kealey of the Cato Institute, who notes that U.S. government analyses, including those by the Congressional Budget Office and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, have found that government-funded research projects historically failed to generate profits on average, unlike privately funded projects.
Lau's proposed solution for research with potential "useful spillovers" that the market won't initially support is not government grants, but philanthropy. He suggests that if a project has merit, charitable foundations and private donors should foot the bill, not taxpayers who have no say in the matter.
The column, published on January 7, 2026, challenges Canadians and policymakers to scrutinize how public funds are allocated through agencies like SSHRC and to demand greater accountability for the tangible returns on these substantial investments.
