SSHRC in the Federal Budget

Niki Ashton, MP for Churchill, is publicizing the following petition concerning a little-noticed provision of the Federal Budget. People associated with the History Department will want to be aware of this matter.

To the House of Commons in Parliament Assembled

We, the undersigned residents of Canada, wish to bring to your attention
the following:

For more than thirty years, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) has been promoting and supporting university-based research and training in the humanities and social sciences. SSHRC funding has been used to complete ground breaking research in countless areas in Canada and around the world.

The Federal Budget presented on January 27th contains a sentence that has the potential to halt this kind of research: "Scholarships granted by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council will be focused on business-related degrees".

These measures are backward and insulting to the thousands of Canadians that are students and researchers in the social sciences and humanities.

THEREFORE, we petitioners are calling upon the government to remove this sentence from the 2009 Budget and ensure that SSHRC funding not be allocated to one specific discipline but to the range of studies in the social sciences and humanities.

http://nikiashton.ndp.ca/sshrc