Funding for Federal Granting Councils

The Canadian Association of University Teachers represents 66,000 university and college teachers, academic librarians, researchers and staff at more than 120 universities and colleges in Canada. Their 2012 brief to the Federal Finance Committee contains some useful numbers. 

I was particularly interested to see their data showing decreased funding to Canada’s federal granting councils. Using constant dollars, the brief spells out that, over the past five years, the decreases in base funding have amounted to the following: 

–SSHRC:  -11% 

-NSERC: -1.2%

–CIHR:    -4.1%

I am especially concerned by the very significant drop in SSHRC funding over such a short time span.