Seizing Canada’s Past: Politics and the Reinvention of Canadian History
The federal government’s latest round of “austerity”cuts threaten to undermine Canadian history research and limit the capacity of the public to know this country’s past. While the recent federal budget slashes funding for Library and Archives Canada, Canadian studies programs, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, it also redirects funds for history research into the political control of individual ministers. Within the Conservative Party of Canada’s ideological agenda to reduce the role of government in the lives of Canadians lies a contradictory policy initiative for direct cabinet control over the financing, research, and production of knowledge about Canadian history.