Tri-Agency Updates To The Institutional Agreement

The Tri-Agency is updating the institutional agreement and institutions will be asked to sign the new version by March 31, 2018.

The top three changes to look out for are:

1. Increased flexibility in how to enforce. At the recent Canadian Association of Research Administrators' ("CARA") conference in Winnipeg, there was a lot of discussion about the proposed increased flexibility. The Tri-Agency noted that their guidelines are now very prescriptive and the move will be to a more principle-based approach. The discussion raised concerns about the ability for institutions to enforce the policies with less clarity rather than more, the potential for diversity of practice, and the possibility of making interpretations public as a way to give institutions guidance.