CIHR Grants and Awards Expenditures: Fiscal Year 2020-21

As the Government of Canada's health research investment agency, CIHR supports promising researchers and projects through a variety of mechanisms. With overall expenditures of more than $1 billion each year, CIHR invests nearly 95% of its funding directly in health research activities (with the remaining 5% allocated to operating costs).

The figures below describe how CIHR's grants and awards (G&A) expenditures were disbursed in 2020-21.

In 2020-21, CIHR invested $1,235,880,411 in G&A. The G&A expenditures are divided into two main categories to reflect CIHR's financial management investment flexibility in its programs: discretionary funding and non-discretionary funding.

Figure 1: Budget Overview

From 2019-20 to 2021-22, CIHR and its partners are providing $463M to fund COVID-19 research grants and to support the health research community through the impact of COVID-19 on their research projects.

Discretionary Funding

The discretionary funding category represents the portion of funding over which CIHR has financial management and investment flexibility.

The discretionary funding category supports a variety of programs, including investigator-initiated research programs, training and career support programs, and research in priority areas.

For 2020-21, the discretionary funding category represented about 64% of the total G&A expenditures, or approximately $790.9M.

Figure 2: Discretionary Funding Investments

CIHR has the authority to determine which programs to support within the discretionary funding category. However, CIHR cannot change the proportion of its overall G&A budget assigned to this category, as the proportion assigned to non-discretionary funding is essentially fixed (see Fig. 3: Non-Discretionary Funding).

Non-discretionary Funding

The non-discretionary funding category of CIHR's G&A budget can be further divided into Government of Canada Priorities (also known as Ring-Fenced Funds) and a funding envelope for Tri-Agency Programs (also known as Separately Listed Grants). CIHR's investments through the non-discretionary funding portion of its G&A budget are prescribed by the Government of Canada. As a result, CIHR has very limited authority to use the funding for any purpose other than the one(s) prescribed.

For 2020-21, the non-discretionary funding category represented about 31% of the total G&A expenditures, or approximately $445.0M.

Figure 3: Non-discretionary Funding Investments

The Government of Canada Priorities funding envelope (nearly 43% of non-discretionary funding, and approximately 15% of the total CIHR G&A budget) supports strategic initiatives that have been announced in Federal Budgets, including long-standing initiatives, such as the HIV/AIDS Research Initiative, as well as newer initiatives, such as Antimicrobial Resistance, post-traumatic stress (PTS) research and the Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR).

As the name suggests, the Tri-Agency Programs funding envelope (approximately 57% of non-discretionary funding, and approximately 21% of the total CIHR G&A budget) supports tri-agency programs such as the Canada Research Chairs, Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships, and Canada First Research Excellence Fund – among many others. These programs are designed to support all areas of research through collaborations between the tri-agencies—the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and CIHR—with each agency administering the funding for projects relevant to their specific mandate. For example, funding for a Canada Research Chair awarded to a researcher working in an area of health research would be managed and disbursed by CIHR.

Date modified:

2022-09-22