When we heard of the cancellation of CIHR spring competition, we were very surprised and now worried, because the way it works in fundamental research is that the institutions, and also the CFI, make a lot of investment in new research. They set up the labs, they provide start-up funding for several years and there are a lot of things going on before the researcher is ready to submit his or her first request for funding. When they are ready and submitted and everything is done, and they are stopped cold like that, it creates a lot of frustration.
It's creating a lot of frustration when they're stopped after all these investments by the institutions have been done, so that's one element.
The second element is that we feel health research should not be at the expense of COVID research. The response was good and I don't want to take anything of that back, but if we are seeing the monies that are flowing into COVID-19 research being subtracted from future competitions, that would compromise what we have in health research.