Science and Research committee  That's a really good question. I might need to go back and look at the distribution of the research hospitals and then their affiliated institutions, but perhaps, theoretically.... In terms of health research, if you were, for example, to speak to HealthCareCAN and those who are active in the health research space, they would very clearly articulate the importance of being able to apply directly as a health institution as opposed to as a university, given the wide variety of priorities for a university.

Science and Research committee  Yes, we need to consider it.

Science and Research committee  Perhaps if I could just add to that, I agree with Dr. Adem's comments as well. In terms of the peer review committees that we have for our project grant competition, we have about 60 peer review panels who operate twice a year. We do have members of staff who are at those peer review panels, and we are monitoring for comments that might suggest a bias according to institutional size as well as some other elements.

Science and Research committee  Yes, it is. I don't have the data as to whether I would say it's all of them, but I would say that most of them would be affiliated with, let's say, a parent university, if you will. However, at CIHR, the research hospitals are able to apply directly to us as opposed to having to go through their affiliated university.

Science and Research committee  It would be both. In some cases, a researcher or a professor may have an affiliation at more than one institution. Again, it is up to the researcher to identify on that application who their parent institution is, if you will. It provides flexibility. What we have seen and what we hear in health research is that, because universities serve a wide variety of research interests, health topics may not be necessarily prioritized by the university; however, they would be by the research hospital.

Science and Research committee  Thank you for that clarification. For CIHR, when we take a look at who receives our funding, certainly there is the U15 group with its affiliated institutes. We also look to research hospitals, as well as the small and medium institutions and the other organizations that I mentioned in response to the previous question.

Science and Research committee  I'll be brief. CIHR has many different funding programs. I've mentioned the project grant competition, which has about a 20% success rate across the country. Strategic funding has higher success rates. In fact, that is where I would encourage all institutions to consider applying again.

Science and Research committee  That's an excellent question. There's no threshold in terms of size, whether it's the number of teaching staff or research staff or the size of the community. In fact, anyone is eligible to apply. For those demographics, we are able to get them in a breakdown according to whether they are francophone or according to their geographic location across the country.

Science and Research committee  Thank you for your question. Perhaps I could speak a little more generally to support for francophone research at CIHR. Within my tenure at CIHR, which is about the past five and a half years, we have implemented some changes—not all that we need, but some—in order to support francophone health research and researchers.

Science and Research committee  Maybe for the latter part I will follow up with you afterwards with the numbers of those who have applied. One example would be ITK. I think the members of this committee are familiar with this Inuit organization. They recently applied to be eligible to apply for and hold CIHR funding and were successful in satisfying those requirements.

Science and Research committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to thank you for inviting me to appear before your committee today. It's a privilege to take part in this meeting in support of your important work on the distribution of federal funds among post-secondary educational institutions. As you know, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, or CIHR, is the largest funder of health research in Canada.

Health committee  Maybe I'll start off and then I'll turn it over to Dr. Kaida. I agree with you that those statistics around one in four women not responding to the first-line treatment certainly underscores the importance of our finding other treatments. I don't have it handy right now, but I will go back and take a look at what we have funded in this domain to see whether there may be some early studies that are showing some promising treatments and maybe what will go on after that.

Health committee  Great. Thank you for the question. How long do you have? First of all, I have to credit so many people, including Dr. Kaida, who is here today as our current scientific director of the CIHR institute of gender and health. Dr. Kaida joined us within the past year or so. Before her, it was Dr.

Health committee  Go ahead, Cindy.

Health committee  Thank you so much for the question. I really wish I had an answer to it as well. I'm hoping that the other study that occurred on health human resources might shed some light on that. In fact, if it was taking a GBA+ approach, that should be picked up in that conversation as well.