The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the federal health research agency, has listed six grants dated July 1, 2026 and running to June 30, 2029, five of $300,000 and one of $298,675, under the label Operating Grant: Leadership Award for Vaccine Research. Four are labelled CEPI-CIHR: Robert Kozak of Toronto, Angela Rasmussen of Saskatoon, Anna Blakney of Vancouver and Matthew Miller of Hamilton. Two are labelled NRC-CIHR: Hagar Labouta of Toronto and Jean-Simon Diallo of Ottawa.
CIHR’s funding page for the “Leadership Award for Excellence in Vaccine Research for Infectious Diseases of Epidemic Potential” says $1.8 million was available for up to six awards: $1.2 million for four grants in the CIHR-CEPI pool and $600,000 for two in the CIHR-NRC pool. The page, marked anticipatory, says CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, “will at least match CIHR’s level of support in cash contribution” on the four CEPI-pool awards, while the National Research Council (NRC) matches in kind; the grant records show only CIHR’s share. McMaster University’s July 30, 2026 announcement of Miller’s award says recipients “receive $600,000 in research funding over a three-year period.”
Rebel News reported in January 2024 that the World Economic Forum “helped found” CEPI in 2017, after Ezra Levant and Avi Yemini found its chief executive, Richard Hatchett, “not keen to talk to independent journalists” in Davos. A CIHR release of April 26, 2023 says that “Since 2017, Canada has provided a total of $114 million to CEPI,” and that an earlier CIHR-CEPI round announced that year committed $2.7 million to five researchers.
Rasmussen is a research scientist at VIDO, the University of Saskatchewan’s Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization. In a May 2021 university interview she said, “Everybody get vaccinated as soon as you can.” In an October 2021 Canadaland interview she called “the hypothesis that this had its origins in RaTG13 and the Mojiang mine” “absolutely, demonstrably untrue.” The sources do not say how the six were chosen.
CIHR’s president is Dr. Paul Hébert, appointed for five years from January 2, 2025, in an announcement by then health minister Mark Holland on November 14, 2024. The records name no signing official. Web searches found no donations, party roles or controversy for Hébert; the Elections Canada database itself could not be queried.
Canada had given CEPI $114 million by 2023. Now CEPI is adding at least matching cash to four of Ottawa’s own vaccine awards.
