Question Period Note: CANCELLATION OF CIHR SPRING GRANT COMPETITION

• Why did CIHR cancel its Spring 2020 Project Grant Competition?
• How were Covid-19 research grants selected and approved for funding?

Spring 2020 Project Grant Competition
• I want to assure you that CIHR did not take the decision lightly to postpone the Spring 2020 Project Grant competition and consulted closely with the research community when considering options in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• In March, it became clear that asking hundreds of researchers to travel to Ottawa to review thousands of applications was not the right thing to do. Physical distancing had to be respected and researchers were preoccupied with the closing of their labs across Canada.
• This is why, instead of launching the Spring Competition, CIHR decided to act quickly to support the research community in this difficult time and granted extensions to researchers who currently hold a CIHR grant.
• No funding from the Spring Competition was used in the funding of research related to COVID-19; all remaining funds will be reinvested in future Project Grant Competitions.

Rapid Research Response to COVID-19
• As you know, research is a critical component of both domestic and international efforts to address COVID-19- and the Canadian research community has risen to the challenge.
• With respect to CIHR’s COVID-19 Rapid Research Response, standard processes were expedited though, as per usual, each application was subjected to rigorous peer review.
• And I want to thank the research community for responding in record time to identify the most promising research projects to fight this virus. To keep the COVID-19 funding competition moving quickly, many researchers volunteered their time and effort to peer review the applications CIHR received.
• As such, I have confidence that the research funded through CIHR’s Rapid Research Response to COVID-19 represents projects that have the greatest potential to help Canada address this public health crisis.

Why did CIHR cancel the Spring 2020 Grant Competition?

CIHR made the decision to cancel the spring competition following consultations with its partners at the U-15, Universities Canada, HealthCareCAN, and the University Delegates Network, among others. CIHR made this decision for the following key reasons:
• Virtual review is currently not feasible. With the situation continuing to evolve, we could not be certain about the reliability of the critical infrastructure required to deliver a high-quality competition.
• Many of our peer reviewers are clinician scientists and health professionals who have heeded the call to lend a hand as resources are stretched thin on the ground. It would have been irresponsible for CIHR to divert their attention at this critical time of need.
• With researchers following public health advice to curtail travel and self-isolate, carrying out face-to-face peer review for the Spring 2020 Project Grant competition would have been contrary to all public health advice.
• Our pool of peer reviewers is made up of many professors who are now faced with the task of modifying their courses and final exams to switch to delivering them in an online format. This shift will entail a great deal of work, and we do not want to add to their burden.
• Finally, we know that, just as we all are, the researchers who would normally peer review for this competition are occupied with looking after the health and safety of their families and loved ones, as well as additional care-giving roles, which need to be their top priority.

How will the funds from the Spring 2020 Project Grant competition be redistributed to the research community?

CIHR had planned to invest $275M in this competition and, as with all competitions, this investment would have been made over multiple fiscal years. Similar to the measures taken when the Spring 2017 Project Grant competition was delayed, CIHR will use some of the funds that were planned for the Spring 2020 competition to financially extend all existing investigator-initiated research grants scheduled to expire between June 30, 2020 and March 30, 2021, for one year. This extension applies only to Nominated Principal Applicants (NPAs) with a grant expiring within the date range who applied to the Spring 2020 competition, as these applicants were applying for a grant to replace one that was expiring. Additionally, CIHR will financially extend all bridge grants provided to NPAs in the Fall 2019 Project Grant competition who also applied to the Spring 2020 Project Grant competition.

These measures are anticipated to cost $31M and will be taken from the $275M that was planned for the Spring 2020 Project Grant competition. The remaining amount (approximately $244M) will be allocated to the Project Grants program to help mitigate the effects of increased application pressures for future competitions. In addition, CIHR’s emergency funding for COVID-19 research was not taken from the Project Grant envelope. It is specifically a component of the Government of Canada response to this crisis and is new money to CIHR (i.e., not from our base budget). The specific budgets available for those future Project Grant competitions will be announced when the next funding opportunity launches this summer.

COVID-19 Rapid Research Response at a glance:
Canada’s research community is contributing to the global response to COVID-19 and is well-poised for significant discoveries.

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), as Canada’s health research funding agency, has moved at an unprecedented pace to mobilize the research community and deliver programs while maintaining rigour in funding the most outstanding research.

Canadians will benefit from this research through enhanced prevention, detection, and treatment options for COVID-19 as well as an evidence base on which to inform effective social and public health policy responses.

To mobilize Canada’s research community, CIHR and its federal and provincial partners accelerated their timelines to launch the initial two COVID-19 Rapid Research Response competitions, totaling $54.3M that translated into 99 research grants.

The medical countermeasures funding accounts for 52 of the 99 projects funded for a total of $36.5M, including research into vaccines, diagnostics, transmission dynamics, therapeutics and clinical management. The social and policy countermeasures funding accounts for 47 of the 99 projects funded for a total of $17.7M, including research into coordination, governance, and logistics; public health response and its impact; social dynamics, communications, and trust; and, transmission dynamics.

• CIHR used the priorities identified by the WHO and GloPID-R to inform this initiative.
• Hundreds of researchers volunteered their expertise to peer review the applications received so that the funding competition could be completed in record time.
• Grants funded for two-year terms and with an agreement that data and findings would be openly shared.

On April 23, 2020, CIHR was approved for an additional $114.9M in funding through the Prime Minister’s announcement of new support for countermeasures against COVID-19. Building on the initial investment of $54.3M to support 99 research projects on COVID-19, the majority of the new investment of will enable researchers to accelerate the development, testing and implementation of medical and social countermeasures to mitigate the rapid spread of COVID-19 and its negative consequences on people, communities, and health systems.

SYNOPSIS
• COVID-19 continues to draw public, political and media attention with most recent scrutiny on funding decisions for non-COVID-19 and COVID-19 research, notably CIHR’s Rapid Research Response and the Spring 2020 Project Grant Competition.