WATCH: Gad Saad blasts diversity quotas as a threat to science, research

Diversity quotas are an “affront to research excellence,” author and academic Gad Saad told a House of Commons science committee Wednesday, clashing with a Liberal MP.

Diversity quotas are an “affront to research excellence,” author and academic Gad Saad told a House of Commons science committee Wednesday, clashing with a Liberal MP over the impact of identity-based hiring and funding on Canadian science.

At the Sept. 24 hearing of the Standing Committee on Science and Research, Liberal MP Taleeb Noormohamed asked Saad for specific examples of how diversity, equity and inclusion rules had lowered research quality.

Saad replied, “I don’t have the citations in front of me, but there is no conceivable reason why diversity along my sexual orientation or my skin color or whether I’m two-spirit or non-binary, is going to improve our capacity to map the human genome or better understand the distribution of prime numbers.”

The MP acknowledged the importance of meritocracy but argued that historical inequality makes it “much harder to measure merit in systems where access to education, the funding, and networks has historically been unequal.”

Saad countered that barriers to entry should be removed but not replaced with quotas.

“Any time that we find that there are lacking equality of opportunities, then we should intervene and try to solve these,” he said. “But that doesn’t come from saying that only queer people who are non-binary get to be a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Waterloo. I mean, imagine how insane that makes us look globally.”

Saad called the growth of identity-based research funding “grotesque” and warned that public trust in academia is eroding when “parasitic ideas” replace merit.

His testimony mirrored comments reported by other witnesses, including professor Eric Kaufmann, who said DEI metrics “create the conditions for delegitimizing research funding,” and researcher Robert Thomas, who cautioned that government policy goals are “displacing focus on the individual’s work itself.”

The committee is reviewing whether federal research funding rules, now heavily tied to DEI targets, still encourage excellence and innovation. Its findings will be reported to the House of Commons later this year. The next committee meeting is October 1.

Gad Saad’s full House of Commons committee appearance can be viewed HERE