Drawing upon publicly accessible information on the websites of ten Canadian
research universities, this paper aims to shed some light on the assumed variation
of institutional policies regarding the PhD dissertation defense in Canada. It
discusses How are the institutional policies on the doctoral dissertation defense
different across Canadian universities?; What do these differences imply about
the role, function, and purpose of the oral defense in the PhD examination in
Canada?; and How might these differences inform PhD education in Canada?. It
concludes with a call for academics and students’ awareness of these variations in
policy and practice