Yes, of course.
There are a number of examples. First, we need only think of access to funding for the Canada Research Chairs and the funding offered by the Canada Foundation for Innovation. Quotas are imposed based on the number of federal grants received in the past. So this necessarily puts an upper limit on access to funding in that field.
Second, when the committees evaluate research projects submitted by researchers, they don't always take into account the circumstances in which they conduct their research activities. There are researchers who have only one course to teach a year, and others who have four, but that doesn't mean that the ones who teach fewer courses are less productive when it comes to research. What is important is to evaluate potential, not past excellence, because there may be a lot of potential. That has to be taken into account in the evaluation criteria.
There is another unfavourable factor. Increasingly, a matching contribution is required. The university is asked what its commitment is, whether financial or in kind, for a particular project. The smaller institutions necessarily have fewer financial and human resources, so they are not on a level playing field for the evaluation. That doesn't mean at all that the project is less important. No correlation can be drawn between the two things.
We therefore have to be careful when it comes to the indicators used for doing a good assessment of potential and clearly identifying excellence, regardless of the form it takes. That goes well with the capacity to support diversity. We do see diversity within underrepresented groups, but it also exists among the researchers at the different institutions, and it has to be recognized.