David, thank you for the question.
The Canada research chairs are some of our prestigious chairs. They were brought in in the year 2000. We have two kinds of chairs. Tier one Canada research chairs receive $200,000 over seven years, and tier two chairs receive $100,000 over five years.
We have made changes to the program. The tier one chairs used to be able to have seven years, then seven years and then seven years and that could go on forever. We have capped that at one renewal. Why? It gives more researchers access to these prestigious chairs.
We have actually made the first increase to the tier two funding in 19 years. That's because it is for early-career researchers.
We have made changes in terms of equity and diversity. Of course, I pulled the data; that's what I do as I want to see how we're doing. If we look at the history of the Canada research chairs program, we weren't close to our chairs reflecting the Canada we see today when you look at percentages of the population. I told our institutions that they had two years to make the voluntary targets that they had agreed to in 2006. I really want to thank our institutions. They really changed the way they do nominations and, for the first time, 50% women were nominated for these chairs. The highest percentage of indigenous, racialized and persons with disabilities were being nominated to these chairs.
I want to stress that, for the first time, we have five persons with disabilities holding a research chair. That's not 5%. It's five. That shows the work that needs to be done and that's why we're bringing in the dimensions charter.