The Canada Research Chairs (CRC) program is a highly competitive, effective tool for attracting talent, but it operates at a scale that falls short of Canada’s growing intellectual needs, writes Concordia University PhD candidate Anton Clark. Clark proposes doubling the number of CRCs from 2,285 to 4,570, with a proportional increase in support for social sciences and humanities fields. He positions the expansion as both an economic and democratic investment, noting that “the current scale of Canada’s federally supported tenure scaffolding treats intellectual capacity as excess spending rather than an essential component of major projects.” Clark concludes that a larger CRC program would leverage existing infrastructure to retain Canadian talent, build research capacity, and support national sovereignty in a knowledge economy.
