Mr. Speaker, with regard to (a), all participants of the peer review process, including peer reviewers, are subject to the conflict of interest and confidentiality policy of the federal research funding organizations, which defines conditions under which an individual cannot be a peer reviewer, in particular sections 6.2.1 and 6.2.2. Those conditions are further detailed in the Conflict of Interest and Confidentiality Agreement for Peer Reviewers and Peer Review Observers, the signing of which is a condition of participation in peer review.
The agreement states that there may be a real, perceived or potential conflict of interest when the peer reviewer or observer would receive professional or personal benefit resulting from the funding opportunity or application being reviewed; has a professional or personal relationship with an applicant or the applicant’s institution; has a direct or indirect financial interest in a funding opportunity or application being reviewed; or is currently under investigation for an alleged breach of funding organization policies.
A conflict of interest may be deemed to exist or perceived as such when peer reviewers or observers are applicants within the competition and have ability to bias or influence the process to the benefit of their application; are a relative or close friend, or have a personal relationship with an applicant; are in a position to gain or lose financially/materially from the funding of an application; have had long-standing scientific or personal differences with an applicant; are currently affiliated with an applicant’s institution, organization or company, including research hospitals and research institutes; or are closely professionally affiliated with an applicant because of having in the last six years frequent and regular interactions with an applicant in the course of their duties at their department, institution, organization or company; been a supervisor or a trainee of an applicant; collaborated, published, or shared funding with an applicant, or have plans to do so in the immediate future; or been employed by the institution when an institution is the applicant; and/or feel for any reason unable to provide an impartial review of the application.
With regard to (b), as outlined above, there are numerous conditions defining a conflict of interest and which may prevent a fair review from proceeding, most notably when reviewers are closely professionally affiliated with an applicant, as a result of having in the last six years frequent and regular interactions with an applicant in the course of their duties at their department, institution, organization or company. Together with the list of other conditions, this is intended to mitigate against any conflict of interest situations.
With regard to (c) and (d), CIHR does not “remove” members from their position as a member of the peer review committee; rather, their self-declared conflicts are used by CIHR to manage and avoid conflicts of interest during the peer review meetings. Practically speaking, this means that during peer review meetings, a member will be asked to leave the discussions for an application on which they declared a conflict of interest. That member is also not given access to any material related to that same application. Members in a conflict-of-interest situation are returned to the discussion once deliberations on the application in conflict have ended. This approach avoids conflict of interest situations in the scientific peer review process at the core of the CIHR mandate.