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The federal government’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) — a taxpayer-funded agency that burns through over $1 billion a year — has been bankrolling eyebrow-raising academic projects that few Canadians would ever consider priorities.

Records obtained and reviewed by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) reveal that SSHRC has greenlit grants for projects ranging from the “life cycle of grocery carts” to “gender politics in Peruvian rock music,” “fat fashion selfies,” and even “kink community insights.”

Franco Terrazzano, CTF’s federal director said, “The government could have given Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys a couple pepperoni sticks for a report about grocery carts rather than billing taxpayers six figures.”
It's true. 

Grocery Cart “Life Cycle” Study Still Rolling After Seven Years

Among the most ridiculous grants: $105,000 was shelled out for a 2018 study titled Cart-ography: Tracking the Birth, Life and Death of an Urban Grocery Cart, From Work Product to Work Tool, led by Kate Elliot of Simon Fraser University.

According to SSHRC records, the project explores “the relationships between carts and the humans who design, assemble, use and repurpose them.” Despite being funded seven years ago, the study remains unfinished. SFU’s website confirms Elliot is still working on the “grocery cart life cycle” as part of her PhD.

Feminist Rock and “Sensual Power Dynamics”

In 2022, SSHRC handed $20,000 to Fabiola Bazo at the University of British Columbia for Gender Politics of Peruvian Rock Music. The research, guided by “feminist and queer perspectives,” treats music as an extension of “sensual and sexual practices” and the “dynamics of power.”

Bazo plans to debut her findings in a “curated exhibition,” arguing that her work “cannot be presented in a written text alone.”

The “Rhetoric of the Selfie”

Another taxpayer-funded masterpiece: Rhetoric of the Selfie, a $94,000 study by Aimée Morrison at the University of Waterloo, delves into the “politics and narratives of self-representation online.”

Her research includes analyses of “fat fashion photography on Instagram,” “social justice selfies,” and selfies that “violate social norms.” Morrison, who previously received $58,000 in 2011 for similar work, once joked:

“Basically, I fart around on the internet for most of my teaching and research.”

“We Are All Astronauts” — Except the Taxpayers Paying for It

In 2019, $21,000 went to a Carleton–Western University duo, Sarah Smith and Kirsty Robertson, for We Are All Astronauts. The project aimed to explore “speculative futures” through “ecotopias, utopias, and dystopias.”

No report has been published, but the researchers did manage to co-curate an art exhibit in 2025 titled The Air of the Now and Gone, exploring how humanity can “move forward” amid the “wicked problem” of climate change.

Other Notable “Research” Projects Funded by SSHRC

The CTF uncovered dozens of other bizarre grants, including:

• Cycling Towards Change: Advancing Mobility Justice, Gender Equity, and Sustainable Development through Bicycles — $24,500
• Fat Chair: Thickening Design Standards through Fat Studies — $58,000
• Nostalgia for the Non-Existent: Musical Nostalgia for Fictional Pasts in Video Games — $27,000
• The Erotics of Rule-Following in British Romanticism — $93,000
• Learning From Ice — $50,000
• She’s Still Sounding: Working Toward a Gender-Inclusive and Intersectional Piano Curriculum — $17,500
• Teens’ Self-Fashioning of Sexual and Gender Identities in Online Harry Potter Fan Communities — $7,778
• Disgraced Former Rodeo Princesses — $17,500
• Investigating Barriers to Birth Registration Among Labour Migrant Families in the Malaysian Palm Oil Sector — $35,300
• Are Kinksters Doing It Better? Gaining Insights on Sexual Wellbeing from Kink Community Members to Promote Flourishing — $73,786
• Playing for Pleasure: The Affective Experience of Sexual and Erotic Video Games — $50,000
• Re-visioning Yoga and Yoga Bodies: Expanding Modes of Embodiment with Non-Normative Bodies — $45,000

Billions for Academia, While Basic Needs Go Unmet

The SSHRC’s $1 billion annual budget sits on top of the $17 billion Canada Social Transfer, which funds post-secondary education, child care, and social services. Provinces like Alberta also spend billions more — $6.6 billion this year alone — on higher education.

Ottawa is spending like an artsy influencer with a government credit card and Canadian taxpayers are the ones left holding the empty grocery cart.