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 2023-24.
In 2023-24, CIHR invested $1,258,382,393 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.
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 2023-24, the discretionary funding category represented about 64% of the total G&A expenditures, or approximately $808.8M.
Of this $808.8M, CIHR invested $654.7M (or 81%) in investigator-initiated research programs, $132.2M (or 16%) in research in priority areas, and $21.9M (or 3%) in training and career support.
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).
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 2023-24, the non-discretionary funding category represented about 36% of the total G&A expenditures, or approximately $449.6M.
The Government of Canada Priorities funding envelope (nearly 47% of non-discretionary funding, and approximately 17% 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 and STBBI 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 53% of non-discretionary funding, and approximately 19% 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.
