Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my friend and colleague, the member of Parliament for Sault Ste. Marie.
I am pleased to speak today about the importance of research that is so critical to the health and well-being of all Canadians as well as to our country's prosperity. Before I begin, I wish to first thank the residents of Vaughan—Woodbridge and York Region for their response to signing up and receiving the vaccine. As of today, nearly 73% of eligible York Region residents have received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. It has been fantastic work by everyone. I wish to encourage all residents to continue to sign up and to check for continual updates at york.ca and through my communications channels. Getting vaccinated is how we will exit the pandemic. Let us continue to make great progress together.
On another note, we were all shocked and saddened by the news of the mistreatment of indigenous children who were sent to residential schools and never able to return home to their families. The loss of these children, these innocent souls, is an insufferable loss for their families and the communities they were a part of. This is a tragic and shameful part of Canada's history. The news from the Kamloops Indian Residential School is truly unfathomable.
Returning to the opposition's motion, support for research has been central to Canada's domestic and international efforts to tackle COVID-19. Since the onset of the global pandemic, the Canadian research community has risen to the challenge at an unprecedented pace. Canada is fortunate to be home to some of the world's best and most innovative minds across academia and industry. They have come together in a concerted and collaborative response to advance urgent and impactful research.
Through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, or CIHR, our government has been working hand in hand with research partners across Canada and around the globe to find solutions to this pandemic and protect Canadians and their loved ones. As members may know, CIHR was the first government-funded agency in the world to launch an open call for COVID-19 research, in February 2020. In response to the emergence of the pandemic, CIHR quickly shifted its focus to the mobilization and acceleration of Canadian research on COVID-19. It did so while committing to a balanced portfolio of research into medical and social countermeasures against the pandemic and supporting the research community through pandemic disruptions. It was a remarkable pan-Canadian effort that continues to contribute invaluable evidence to inform and guide the health response to COVID-19 across the country.
Our government is proud to support Canadian research that has made, and continues to make, a real difference. It should be no surprise, therefore, that Canada's scientific leadership and expertise are also renowned worldwide. Our academic researchers, leaders in their field, have established strong and successful international networks, most notably with partners in the United States and Europe.
At the government level, we are also working closely with international global counterparts to optimize the impact of COVID-19 research for all. A global health threat, after all, requires global action, and collaboration has proved eminently valuable to mobilizing a rigorous scientific response since the earliest days of the pandemic. This is why we took rapid steps, in concert with global partners, to leverage existing international research partnerships and to forge impactful new collaborative measures.
For instance, on January 31, 2020, CIHR signed a joint statement with Wellcome and 65 other signatories to share research data and findings relevant to the COVID-19 outbreak. Shortly thereafter, CIHR played a leadership role in a forum convened by the World Health Organization, which informed the development of a coordinated global research road map.
Through CIHR, we are also participating in the Global Research Collaboration for Infectious Disease Preparedness: an international consortium of 29 research-funding organizations worldwide. This network plays an important role in facilitating preparedness and rapid-response research during significant infectious disease outbreaks, including COVID-19. In fact, it is a testament to Canada's scientific leadership that CIHR is currently chair of this international consortium. As pandemic research efforts and outputs accelerated through CIHR, our government signed a joint statement with international partners to make sure that data resulting from clinic trials was disclosed publicly and in a timely manner.
Meanwhile, the scientific director for CIHR's Institute of Population and Public Health led an international effort to identify and prioritize research needs for rebuilding in a post-pandemic era while safeguarding progress on the UN sustainable development goals. This vast collaborative effort resulted in the UN Research Roadmap for the COVID-19 Recovery, which was released in November 2020.
As we take sound action to rebuild a stronger, more prosperous and more resilient Canada, our government will further invest to strengthen international co-operation in science. We believe in science. This includes mobilizing for the prevention and response to future pandemics, as well as other emerging global health threats that may loom on the horizon.
It means leveraging the outputs of our international research collaborations to strengthen Canada's life sciences sector and revitalize our domestic capacity in biomanufacturing and medical innovation. International collaboration has been a critical element to the successful mobilization of both the Canadian and the global research communities long before the pandemic and in response to it.
Long-standing relationships with international partners forged in response to other health issues such as HIV/AIDS, antimicrobial resistance and dementia made the rapid research response to the pandemic possible.
Looking forward, we are encouraged by recent developments, such as efforts by the G7 to address gaps and improve the effectiveness of scientific co-operation, including in clinical trials. This includes addressing barriers and making clinical research more effective through better representation of diverse populations around the world, all while continuing to address our domestic needs and context.
Of paramount importance to the Canadian context is that we remain committed to supporting community-led, meaningful and culturally safe indigenous health research. Through CIHR's rapid response program—