Finance committee  I'm happy to address that. If Paul-Émile wants to add anything else, he can certainly do so. Our hospital research institute at UHN will be one of the recipients of those funds. The $450 million from the federal government that was announced last Friday is there to support the wages of our staff who have been impacted by COVID-19.

Finance committee  The funds that were announced are there to support the wages of the individuals who are paid from those kinds of external funds. We don't have a lot of details yet on how that will be administered or the rules of eligibility and so on. We're anxiously awaiting those. Our understanding is that it's meant to support retroactively back to the initial time of the suspension, so this will go a long way to helping to preserve those jobs and to ensure that our amazing scientific workforce across Canada can come back and remain at a world-class level.

Health committee  It's having a consequence, like all the consequences of stopping elective activity. We have a very large lung transplant program that has essentially been put on hold. Lots of people are waiting for lungs; lots of people are on those waiting lists, and with every day that goes by, there's a risk to everyone who's there and waiting for those.

Health committee  Well HealthCareCAN represents health researchers across Canada, research hospitals across Canada. We're one of those. There are more than 40 such organizations.

Health committee  I think the investment in COVID research is welcome. This is clearly a huge, worldwide pandemic that needs to be solved, and I firmly believe that science and research are going to be our path out of the pandemic. The investment is good, but it's a piece of it. I think what we're here for today and what we're talking about today is that the larger research infrastructure, what we're hearing from all the charities and the other parts of the research investment, has not been addressed, and is in a very fragile moment.

Health committee  Yes, they largely have. Every academic health science centre, like those in Canada, has largely been suspended whether this is Harvard or Stanford or Johns Hopkins in the United States, anywhere in Europe; they're all very much in that same situation. How they all respond is a little different because they are in different jurisdictions.

Health committee  Yes, the main issue around the reduction of revenue is because when research is suspended it means that much of our revenue also gets suspended. We do a large amount of clinical research, clinical trials, funded by external industry, pharmaceutical companies and biotech companies.

Health committee  Access to the wage subsidy program for our 700 people would allow us to keep them employed and bridge through this suspension so they can participate in COVID-related research and can be there and ready for us to come back when research gets turned on and we can compete for those dollars again.

Health committee  Thank you.

Health committee  Thank you.

Health committee  Mr. Chair, thank you for the opportunity to speak today. As Paul-Émile mentioned, on March 15, nearly all hospital-based, non-COVID-related research across Canada was suspended. At that time, our organization had budgeted $460 million for our hospital's research operations for the fiscal year, a sum which employs 1,000 scientists and 4,000 other highly skilled research staff, including clinical research associates, research nurses, laboratory technicians, biostatisticians, data managers, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows.