I completely agree with Chris. The political strings are as he describes, inevitably so.
Now, you can change the nature of the strings, and that would be an improvement, I suppose, to encourage viewpoint diversity, for sure. We have the problem that he is identifying. There is no question about that, but if you keep it and just reform it, then you're going to just get different kinds of strings.
For my money, the problem is having the overseers with the power to direct the activities of both individual researchers and the universities themselves. These programs require conformity of a type, not just from the applicants but from the institutions. They have requirements for EDI action plans on behalf of the institutions. In order to qualify for Canada research chairs, for example, you have institutions complying with tri-council documents. That means that the whole institution is driven by the political ideological agenda that is embedded in the tri-council programs.