Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I would like to thank the committee for the invitation to appear before it today. Both as CIHR's president and as a scientist, I consider it a privilege to address this committee, and more so since this committee has drawn attention in its first two reports to the issue of underfunding of graduate students in Canada and in particular to the fact that in Canada we have graduate students and post-doctoral fellows living below the poverty line. Many often hold down multiple jobs in order to attain their graduate degrees and the experience necessary to join the workforce whether that be in academia or in the private sector.
As the president of CIHR, I have a unique opportunity to meet with graduate students across this country as I regularly visit university campuses. Uniformly graduate students and post-doctoral fellows clearly express their dedication to research and to making lasting impacts for the health of Canadians, but I have also heard their concerns that the failure of support at this most crucial moment in time as they embark on meaningful and engaging research careers sends a strong signal as to what the future may hold.
When I speak with their supervisors, many of whom, like me, have had rich and rewarding careers as Canadian researchers, they speak openly about the difficulties in recruiting Canadian students into the pathway of being researchers and about why many are beginning to consider training outside of Canada.
As the Government of Canada's health research funding agency, we have a mandate to support peer-reviewed research of the highest calibre. We have a bold ten-year strategic plan, and it speaks to attaining the best health for all, powered by outstanding research, a vision that is dependent on talented research teams based at universities, hospitals and other research and community organizations in all corners of this country.
In this plan we make the commitment that we will foster both health research capacity in Canada and sustainable careers for individual researchers, and we are clear that this commitment to career sustainability includes our training programs.
The vast majority of CIHR's budget is devoted to funding research, through peer-reviewed research grants on topics selected by the individuals or teams of researchers, in support of strategic research directions deemed critical by the Government of Canada.
This direct research investment has resulted in some of Canada's and the world's greatest scientific achievements. We need only look at the discovery of lipid nanoparticles 20 years ago by a Canadian, Pieter Cullis, to understand how important our contributions continue to be, or to the discovery of novel CAR T-cell therapies that will save the Canadian health system literally tens of millions of dollars while making available this crucial cancer therapy in all corners of the country. The Canadian research ecosystem is rife with such examples.
However, these same funds are also the main source of financial support for master's and doctoral scholarships and post-doctoral fellowships in that these trainees are paid directly through the grants of their supervisors. In fact, we estimate that $129 million in support was invested through stipends to graduate students and post-doctoral fellows paid through operating grants this last fiscal year alone.
Along with our sister agencies, CIHR participates in the Canada graduate scholarship program at both the doctoral and the master's program level, investing over $192 million over the last five years. We also see as a critical step supporting the development of our next generation of researchers to provide fellowship programs, programs that provide support for highly qualified applicants in all areas of health research at the post-Ph.D. or post-health professional degree level. These fellowships support them in developing their leadership potential and position them for success as researchers of tomorrow in a very tangible way. In the last five years, CIHR has invested over $121 million in post-graduate fellowships.
By way of example, in early 2021 in the midst of the pandemic, CIHR launched the health research training platform pilot funding opportunity with over $28 million in funding. In addition to providing financial support for trainees, the 12 platforms funded by this program provide the necessary support for experiences and skills needed to lead to high-impact interdisciplinary health research careers in a rapidly evolving research landscape. They provide access to interdisciplinary, interjurisdictional and intersectorial training environments so that Canada's next researchers can benefit from high-calibre mentors.
More recently, we invested $4 million in the innovative health system impact program, which provides highly qualified Ph.D. candidates, post-doctoral researchers and early career researchers opportunities for health research.
In all of these programs, we focus on strengthening the research talent pipeline in accordance with principles of equity, diversity, inclusion and anti-racism. Our goal is to remove systemic barriers to accessing research training funding and to embrace these diverse initiatives.
For example, we're currently piloting an initiative that we are exceptionally proud of, which is called the CIHR research excellence, diversity and independence early career transition award, otherwise known as REDI. This groundbreaking award is an early career transition award for Black and marginalized female scholars that provides significant research support in their training programs and, in partnership with universities, funding in the early parts of their research career.
