Canada Research Continuity Emergency Fund

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The Canada Research Continuity Emergency Fund (CRCEF) is part of the Government of Canada’s COVID-19 Economic Response Plan. The temporary program has been established to help sustain the research enterprise at Canadian universities and health-research institutions that have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It is expected that the program will help reduce negative impacts of the pandemic and ensure that the benefits of significant investments to date in universities and health research institutions are protected. This will maintain Canada’s international competitiveness in the global, knowledge-based economy, and contribute to Canadians’ health and social and cultural lives, as well as the health of Canada’s natural environment.

The program, which has a total budget of $450 million, has two objectives:

as a priority, to provide wage support to universities and health research institutions, both of which are ineligible to the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS), to help them retain research-related personnel during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic (up to $325 million); and
to support extraordinary incremental costs associated with maintaining essential research-related commitments during the COVID-19 pandemic, and then ramping-up to full research activities as physical distancing measures are eased and research activities can resume ($125 million).

The program includes four funding stages. Three of the stages (Stages 1, 2 and 4) exclusively provide wage support for eligible research-related personnel. The remaining stage (Stage 3) supports incurred costs associated with maintenance and ramp-up of research activities. For all stages, institutions must demonstrate the need to access the emergency funds.

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Wilfrid Laurier University is a thriving academic community where equity, diversity, inclusion (EDI) and Indigeneity are part of our core values as a learning institution. We recognize that teaching and learning, and the creation and dissemination of new knowledge, must take place in an institution that recognizes the dignity and value of each and every one of its students, staff and faculty members.

Laurier is committed to upholding the highest standards of EDI in administration and management of the CRCEF program. All processes of the CRCEF will be overseen by Laurier’s existing Research Services Council (RSC). The RSC will be responsible for:

Developing and overseeing a strategy for EDI decision-making for the use of funds
Advising on Laurier’s CRCEF process
Making recommendations to the Vice-President: Research and Vice-President: Academic for funding through stage three of the CRCEF program

The following measures were put in place to ensure EDI-informed decision-making:

The steering committee is composed of individuals from equity-seeking groups.
All steering committee members must complete unconscious bias training.
The steering committee will apply a consistent and transparent approach to all funding recommendations.
Where commitments such as caregiving or childcare impacted individual researchers’ availability during the application process, additional provisions were made to ensure applications from these researchers could be submitted.
All eligible research projects will be considered and decisions will be based on CRCEF program eligibility, regardless of the research area. All fields of research will be valued equally. Careful consideration will be made to ensure research that is non-traditional, based in Indigenous ways of knowing, outside the mainstream of the discipline, or focused on issues of gender, race or minority status is not disadvantage.
All adjudication principles will be applied equally. There will be no individualized funding caps,
The steering committee will seek out additional expertise wherever needed, including in areas such as Indigenous community-based research.
Faculty Deans will be encouraged to bring forward special cases for consideration, in particular when a researcher’s inability to work during the pandemic due to child/family care or increased risk related to exposure to COVID-19.
Self-identification data will be gathered from the Office of Equity and Accessibility.
If requests exceed the institution’s allocation special consideration will be given to researchers known to be most personally impacted by COVID-19.

More details on CRCEF can be found on the Government of Canada CRCEF program page.

Open Call for Requests for Stage Three

Laurier is now undertaking an open call for requests for stage-three funding from CRCEF to support research maintenance and ramp-up costs incurred due to COVID-19

Only direct costs of research that are extraordinary and incremental to those already covered by existing sources of funds, and have been incurred between March 15 and Nov. 15, 2020, are eligible for reimbursement. Up to 75 per cent of such costs may be reimbursed by CRCEF, with the remaining 25 per cent being reimbursed by the Office of Research Services.

Extraordinary incremental costs incurred for research projects funded by all funding sources including governmental, non-governmental and internal funding sources are eligible for stage three support. Extraordinary incremental costs are defined as unanticipated additional costs that would not normally have been incurred in the absence of the COVID-19 pandemic and cannot be funded by existing sources of funds.

Applicants must justify the need for the funds based on actual and forecasted committed costs incurred between March 15 and Nov. 15, 2020. Eligible expenses include costs associated with the following categories:

Maintenance Costs

Costs incurred within the eligible period and associated with maintaining essential research-related activities during the pandemic that are exceptional and incremental to those already covered by existing sources of funds. This includes:

animal and specimen care through the crisis period;
maintenance of equipment, software, cohorts and datasets including warranties, licenses and service contracts;
technological equipment for remote access to maintain assets; and,
safety equipment for personnel dedicated to maintenance.

Ramp-up Costs

Costs incurred within the eligible period and associated with full ramp-up of research activities, as physical distancing measures are eased and research activities can resume. Only costs that are exceptional and incremental to those already covered by existing sources of funds will be supported. Eligible expenses include those incurred at the project level and associated with:

re-organizing the research environment and activities;
additional costs to bring the research back to its pre-pandemic level, including experiments, or related to the restart of collections and datasets (i.e. population-based, environmental);
user fees charged by shared platforms to researchers to restart research activities (i.e. animal-care facilities, digital labs);
rescheduling and restarting human and clinical trials;
exceptional costs to access special facilities, shared platforms and resources, knowledge transfer meetings and workshops;
restarting, reassembling and safety checks of equipment and facilities;
reacquiring lost and donated laboratory and field supplies and equipment, reagents, perishable materials, laboratory animal and other living specimens; and,
personal protective equipment and related items for research personnel.

Eligibility

All Laurier faculty members holding external grant funding are eligible to apply.

Assessment Criteria

Laurier has been allocated an institutional envelope from the CRCEF program. Laurier will approve all eligible requests if the total value of requests does not exceed the envelope.

If requests exceed the institutional envelope, Laurier will conduct an adjudication process. In this event, applicants may be required to submit further information for consideration. The adjudication will be conducted by the RSC who will make recommendations for final decision by the Vice-President: Research and Vice-President: Academic.

Priority consideration will be given to:

Early-career researchers: One hundred thousand dollars will be reserved for researchers who have held a full-time independent research appointment for a period of zero to seven years, beginning with the date of first appointment at Laurier.

The RSC may consider additional criteria, which could include the following:

Pro-rating requests according to funding allocation
The personal impact of the pandemic (i.e. applicant's own or immediate family’s health has been directly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, family obligations for dependent care or limited access to medical care for persons with disabilities)
A minimum incremental cost for a project to be considered for the funding
The financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the grant’s budget exceeding a certain percentage of the annual grant value
Priority given to projects that are at the beginning or in the middle of their terms, versus those that are close to their grant end date
Non-eligibility of projects with considerable financial balances at the end of the fiscal year (March 31, 2020)

Submission Requirements

All faculty members wishing to request funding from the CRCEF program should email Charity Parr-Vasquez with a brief description of the request, current funding source and budget. Submissions must be received by Nov. 25, 2020.

If you are unable to submit a request by this deadline due to ongoing pandemic-related commitments such as caregiving or childcare, please contact Charity Parr-Vasquez to seek accommodation and assistance.

Contact Information of Senior Administrator Responsible for Ensuring Program Requirements are Met:

Jonathan Newman, Vice-President: Research
jonathannewman@wlu.ca