@canadianinalberta.bsky.social:
I’ve never met Jack Mintz but judging by his actions and the things he’s said I’ve come to the conclusion that he is an awful human being and the worst Alberta has to offer
yep, Although Harper, Carney, Smith and the separatists are even more awful.
@lindsaytedds.bsky.social:
Just a bit of context, when Mintz hand picked people when he started his policy school, he selected, not via open competitions but via his own selection methods, 100% men. And the university let him.
When someone is accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.
@charlesrusnell.bsky.social:
Mintz had no concerns when he was appointed to a 12-member economic recovery committee, 10 of which were men, including one who made sexist remarks about women.
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/…
“If you oppose “DEI,” you should have to use the full phrase instead of the letters. Be brave and say, “I opposed diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
Bonus points if you admit which part you don’t like.
Making it an acronym transforms it into a thought-terminating cliche.
From now on, be proud of your opinions, but be specific. Let everyone know if it’s diversity you don’t like, or if it’s equity, or if it’s being inclusive.”
@lindsaytedds.bsky.social:
I once had to hear him compare being questioned and debated on a panel on taxation to being raped…so….
@prleblond.bsky.social:
And we know how that “merit-based”approach ended; they had to bring in a woman to clean up the mess.
@susande.bsky.social:
I have had no respect for him since he wrote a report on why BC should have HST. It was not worth what he was paid by the BC govt of the day, and does not seem to be findable. It was an edited report on Ontario HST, which, according to him, was the panacea and holy grail of taxes. I exaggerate.
Andrea DeKeseredy @andiewinnipeg.bsky.social:
Jack Mintz has a new piece in the Financial Post arguing that men in Canada are being discriminated against through federal research funding allocation and Canada Research Chair hiring quotas.
@pinglamjoeip.bsky.social and I found this is simply misinformation.
Mintz argues equity targets in the prestigious Canadian Research Chairs (CRC) program implies “white males need not apply.” But this is simply not true. The 2029 targets, which Mintz himself quoted, require at least 50.9% of the hirings be allocated to women AND gender minorities.
If, based on the 2025 hiring numbers, 1.4% of the positions will be given to gender minorities, then at most 49.1% can be given to men if women occupy all of the remaining 49.5%.
This means the 2029 equity targets allow for almost equal distribution of men and women. But equal distribution does not mean equal representation.
Some disciplines like humanities and social sciences have a larger portion of women faculty members than natural and medical sciences because of existing gender segregation structures putting women in less prestigious, lower-paid sectors.
An equal distribution of men and women in feminized disciplines means under-representation of women and over-representation of men. In other words, for some disciplines, the 2029 equity targets are actually EDI for men, not women and gender minorities.
The 2025 CRC allocation shows that the program is still reproducing existing gender hierarchy favoring men. Men still dominate in the hiring of the more prestigious Tier 1 CRC positions (50.1%), which recognize established world leaders.
Women occupy a higher percentage (55.9%) of Tier 2 positions, which support emerging scholars who have leadership potential.
Mintz also argues that because so many women are receiving federal research funding, the agencies are not awarding them based on merit. This is also misrepresenting the data.
He states that 61% of SSHRC grants went to women in 2024. This is true, but similar to CRC positions, they are not equal. In the same year, women received 53% of the funding, which is actually down from 2023.
Mintz states that only 24.8% of men received funding from SSHRC, but we don’t know where this number came from. We could not verify it based on the data he references.
It is also difficult to assess if SSHRC is unfairly giving out awards to women and minorities based on overall awards because more women than men apply to SSHRC. What we need to do is look at the success rate.
Women’s success rate in 2024 is only substantially higher than 50% in the partnership grants which have multiple applicants. Their success rate for some of the more prestigious grants is as low as 34%.
In 2024, visible minorities only received 22.8% of the funding with similarly low success rates in several of the more prestigious grants.
He goes on to cite two solutions to this “problem” put forward in the province of Alberta. Applying Bill 18 to federal research funding and the University of Alberta ending EDI hiring. But @pinglamjoeip.bsky.social and I have already shown these “solutions” are not based on data.
In April of 2024 the Government of Alberta proposed screening federal research funding because they felt it was being unfairly allocated to “woke” or “leftist” causes.
We found the opposite, that business research is actually receiving more funding than many social science subjects, like sociology.
In 2026 the University of Alberta removed EDI in their hiring process in an effort to appease Mintz and other members of the provincial government.
But using U of A data, we found little evidence of EDI hiring practices at the university at all.
Opinion: Little evidence of EDI hiring policy in practice at the U of A, The U of A’s recruitment data does not show any signs of progress in EDI, let alone patterns of reverse discrimination.
Lastly, Mintz himself admits that in the other tri-council funding agencies, women are not even in the conversation. Here is NSERC (engineering).
Despite continued insistence men are being discriminated against in academic hiring and research funding, it just isn’t happening.
Jack Mintz: End DEI targets in federal research funding, The provinces, which regulate and fund universities, should step up to make sure grants and new positions are allocated solely on merit by his royal bigoted arrogant old white privileged man self, Jack M. Mintz, Apr 24, 2026
Current federal “diversity, equity and inclusion” (or DEI) criteria for post-secondary research funding are anathema to high-quality university education. If the provinces that regulate and largely finance universities are to fulfill their educational responsibilities, they must put a stop to it.What a fucking lying bully, typical misogynist Canadian con asshat.
Under the federal DEI criteria for prestigious Canada Research Chair (CRC) applications, “all institutions that accept agency funding must make concerted efforts to meet their equity and diversity targets and provide a supportive and inclusive workplace.” Equity targets for 2029 are 50.9 per cent for gender, 22 per cent for “racialized minorities,” 7.5 per for cent disabled candidates and 4.9 per cent for Indigenous — though some candidates may fall into more than one category. The message is clear: white males need not apply.
When Ottawa’s granting councils secretariat put Memorial University on a “consequence” list, withholding its CRC grants for failing to reach its equity targets, Memorial faced a hard choice: either take federal money by complying with Ottawa’s equity targets or maintain merit-based hiring but forgo the funding.
Federal research funding distorts post-secondary hiring by favouring designated “marginalized” groups. It is reverse discrimination that discourages or even bans white males from applying. Almost by definition, it cannot work: lack of bias demands fair consideration for all, not just for some. Without it, many highly qualified academics from targeted groups who would have succeeded without the gift of a leg up will be unfairly accused of having been undeserving.
Systemic bias can apply to many groups, not just officially designated ones. Committees could be biased against academics not educated at Ivy League universities or born in unfriendly countries (e.g., Russia) or possessing certain political leanings (such as those typically appearing on this page).
Since the attacks of October 7, 2023The worst of the attacks and slaughter of Israelis was undertaken by Israel’s own fucking murder machine, the IDF, to create justification to slaughter innocent Palestinina babies, kids, women, students, surgeons, health care and education workers, poets, athletes, musicians, bakers, fisherment, etc., as discussed in a recent study in the Canadian Journal of Higher Education, harassment of Jews has become common in academia. Harassment of Jews or of Zionists? Since Israel’s slaughter of its own to justify them slaughtering more Palestinians after already decades of such slaughter, I am seeing the world turning more and more away from and against Zionists and Zionism, which needs to happen. Zionism is mass murder to enable land theft, it’s evil; Zioinism is Nazism. I punch Nazis, so anyone shoving Israel’s genocide and land theft in Palestine, Lebanon and elsewhere on me as a good thing, I punch.But the DEI rules do not protect them, which is itself a form of discrimination. Some Jewish students applying to medical schools have told me they have been advised to wipe clean their biographies of any reference to Israel or Jewish communal life.Mr. Mintz, have you verified that they were telling the truth? I don’t believe them. If anything, I see Jewish students and others usually, even still today, get preferencial treatment over non Jewish.
When the University of Alberta wisely voted to eliminate DEI that focuses on some but not all systematic bias, its governing board faced the same dilemma as Memorial University: the possible sacrifice of federal research funding. Sensibly, it decided to move ahead despite the cost, believing its efforts to promote access, community and belonging are a better way to eliminate barriers and promote inclusiveness.U of A is a pathetic cowardly institution, caved to pressure, like those in Kid Raping Nazi USA. They know with Harper Carney in power they can do as they like – like the violent shit they pulled violating the charter rights of those protesting for peace for Palestine.
As vice-president and chair of Ottawa’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council from 2012-18, I witnessed the introduction of DEI “targets” in assessing grant applications, which occurred in 2016. I warned that targets would soon become quotas, and that is what has happened.
Given my own Jewish background, I was sensitive to university hiring and admissions quotas that had been applied to Jews in the 1950s — after the Holocaust. My fear was that it could start again.If you don’t want that happening again, tell Israel to stop their genocides and land thefts, publicly protest what Israel is doing. Israel has turned Nazi, that’s obvious to anyone not controlled or owned by Zionism. And authorities using definations equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism to punish pro peace protesters is backfiring, turning the world against Jewish people which is grossly unfair to Jews opposed to Israel’s genocide, of which there are many. PS I am a Canadian born woman, and have been descriminated against my entire fucking life just because I am female. I think Mr. Mintz needs to zip his dishonest whining attacks against DEI.
The SSHRC website provides lots of DEI statistics. In 2024, 61.1 per cent of SSHRC grants went to women, 24.7 per cent to visible minorities, 14.9 per cent to disabled people and 4.2 per cent to Indigenous candidates. By contrast, only 24.8 per cent went to men, which is well below their share of the professoriate. SSHRC has gone overboard to support designated groups partly to make up for lower equity-based awards in natural sciences and engineering research: where 39 per cent went to women, 26 per cent to visible minorities, 4.5 per cent to disabled and one per cent to Indigenous candidates.
There is no doubt that federal research funding influences academic hiring decisions. Most academics argue it’s hard to be a good university teacher without being involved in research. Federal research funding that conditions hiring on identity considerations undermines provincial constitutional responsibilities for education. A co-operative approach is best, but, as Alberta initially held in its “Provincial Priorities Act” (Bill 18), provinces should reject federal research funding when DEI or other rules prevent merit-based hiring. Alberta later exempted universities but the issue remains controversial.Nearly everything con Alberta govt’s do is controversial, and usually descriminatory, often cruelly, to anyone not white Christian or fossil fuel polluter.
Whatever becomes of DEI, the provinces should have more input into the conditions under which federal funding is provided to universities. To improve co-ordination and resolve conflicts there should be a formal mechanism for federal-provincial consultations over research funding. And provinces that don’t agree with Ottawa’s approach should be able to withdraw with compensation.
But what’s crucial both for fairness and excellence is that DEI targets for research funding and hiring end. As U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts has written: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”CJ Roberts is a disgrace, a fucking corrupt Nazi Trump-enabler with zero credibility.
@EmanuelDerman:
Robert Skidelsky, economic historian, 1939-2026 via @FT
“I have come to see economics as a fundamentally regressive discipline . . . disguised by increasingly sophisticated mathematics and statistics.”
Heard him at Columbus during GFC