Senator Kutcher: According to the International Monetary Fund — and here I want to thank Senator Galvez’s office for the research — in 2019, Canada provided our coal industry subsidies worth over $7 billion. At the same time, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research received about $1.2 billion. This doesn’t make sense.

Masters-level graduate students who work in research labs make about $19,000 a year, and PhD students about $21,000 annually. As you know, the low-income cut-off for a single person in 2021 was just over $24,000. Does the government not think that investing in our best and brightest young researchers is as important as subsidizing our coal industry?

Hon. Stan Kutcher: My question is for Senator Gold. Health research is the foundation for improved health outcomes for all Canadians, yet our health research ecosystem is in jeopardy. Investment lags significantly behind other OECD countries, and we’re seeing our best and brightest leave Canada for careers elsewhere. For example, the per cent of health spending allocated to research in the U.S. is 4.7%, in Australia 3.3%, in Canada 1.5%.

In the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Spring 2022 Project Grant competition, only 19% of applications were successful — not because they weren’t excellent but because there wasn’t enough funding. In the U.K., the rate was 35%. We’re lagging behind and we can’t continue to do this.

Health care organizations and top-notch researchers have been calling for a doubling of the funding for our Tri-Council. Will the Government of Canada heed this call for urgent action and commit to doubling the current funding to the Tri-Council in the upcoming budget?