Report of the round table "Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Decolonization in Research" of the Revue3.0 2025 plenary meeting

As part of the 2025 Plenary Meeting, Arilys Jia and Halima Malek (student members of the EDID Committee) led the round table discussion "How to Think about Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Decolonization within a Research Project". The speakers were: Lai-Tze Fan (Director of the EDID Committee), Enrico Agostini Marchese (Research Professional at [Cri-JaDE](https://crijade.com/membres/enrico-agostini-marchese/) and Rivages Poirier-Lemelin (Master’s student in Indigenous Literatures).

Contextualising EDI in Canadian Research

The institutionalized integration of EDI (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion) into Canadian research is a relatively recent phenomenon. Although several EDI initiatives in academic settings can be traced back to the 2000s—the University of Toronto, for example, established its Office of Diversity and Inclusion in 2009—the requirement to demonstrate consideration of EDI issues in research funding applications submitted to federal granting agencies was only established towards the end of the 2010s.

In 2017, the Canada Research Chairs Program adopted an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan (https://www.chairs-chaires.gc.ca/program-programme/equity-equite/action_plan-plan_action-eng.aspx), which calls on institutions with Canada Research Chairs to make “making swift progress toward addressing the underrepresentation of the four designated groups (FDGs)—women, persons with disabilities, Indigenous Peoples and racialized minorities”. This Plan requires, among other things, “all institutions with five or more chair allocations" to "develop an equity, diversity and inclusion plan" which will "guide their efforts in sustaining the participation of and/or addressing the underrepresentation (based on institutions’ equity gaps) of individuals from the FDGs among their chair allocactions". The Plan also requires institutions "report publicly and to the program on the progress made in meeting their objectives on a yearly basis".

The Action Plan was adopted after the 2016 five-year evaluation of the Canada Research Chairs Program revealed that “the majority of institutions do not meet equity targets for many designated groups". These equity targets were established jointly by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), and determined the expected proportions of Canada Research Chairs holders from the four designated groups.