Canada does not have a single national research-funding agency. Federal research grants flow through three separate councils — the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) — collectively known as the Tri-Agency or “the three federal granting agencies.” Each council has its own mandate, competitions, and application portal, but they jointly administer a shared layer of policy, financial-administration rules, and cross-council programs that any researcher or research administrator working with Canadian federal funding needs to understand.
This guide explains how the three-council structure is divided, what the agencies administer jointly rather than separately, and how the resulting system compares to the single-funder-per-discipline models used in the UK (UKRI) and the multi-agency but differently-organized US federal system.
The three councils and their mandates
Each agency’s jurisdiction is defined by subject matter, not by grant type or career stage — a given researcher typically has one “home” agency for most of their funding, though interdisciplinary and partnered work can span more than one.
| Agency | Mandate | Flagship investigator-led mechanism |
|---|---|---|
| CIHR (Canadian Institutes of Health Research) | Health research, across CIHR’s 13 virtual “institutes” spanning biomedical, clinical, health-services, and population/public-health research | CIHR Project Grant — the core investigator-initiated mechanism, open to any career stage and any area of health research, with a specific purpose and defined endpoint |
| NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council) | Natural sciences and engineering, excluding health research and most social-science/humanities research | NSERC Discovery Grant — ongoing, program-of-research funding (not tied to a single defined project) renewed on a multi-year cycle |
| SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council) | Social sciences and humanities, including a broad partnered-research and knowledge-mobilization mandate | Insight Grants (investigator-led research) and Partnership Grants/Partnership Development Grants (partnered, collaborative research) |
A researcher’s home agency is determined by the nature of the research, not by their home department or degree — an engineering researcher working on a health-technology project may apply to CIHR rather than NSERC if the work’s primary contribution is health-focused, and interdisciplinary applications are adjudicated by whichever agency’s mandate the proposal most closely matches, sometimes after a formal eligibility determination.
What the Tri-Agency administers jointly
Beyond their separate competitions, the three councils jointly own a set of programs and policies that apply uniformly regardless of which agency funds a given researcher’s core grant. Understanding this shared layer matters because it is where most Tri-Agency-wide compliance obligations — data management, open access, research ethics, financial administration — actually live.
Tri-agency Institutional Programs Secretariat (TIPS)
The Tri-agency Institutional Programs Secretariat, housed within SSHRC, provides day-to-day administration for programs that are Tri-Agency initiatives rather than the property of any single council. The best-known example is the Canada Research Chairs (CRC) Program, jointly administered by CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC since 2000, along with the related Canada Excellence Research Chairs (CERC) program. Institutions apply through a shared TIPS process rather than through any one agency’s own competition system.
Tri-Agency Guide on Financial Administration (TAGFA)
Once a grant is awarded, its financial administration — allowable costs, use-of-funds rules, purchasing requirements — is governed by the jointly published Tri-Agency Guide on Financial Administration (TAGFA), a principles- and directives-based framework that applies across all three agencies’ grants rather than each council maintaining a separate financial rulebook. Institutions administering CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC funds in parallel therefore apply one shared set of post-award financial rules, not three.
Tri-Agency Research Data Management (RDM) Policy
The Tri-Agency Research Data Management Policy sets shared data-stewardship expectations for all three agencies’ grant recipients, with three components: institutions are required to develop and publicly post an institutional RDM strategy (institutions subject to the requirement were required to post theirs online by March 1, 2023); certain funding opportunities require applicants to submit a Data Management Plan (DMP) as part of the application, a requirement that began rolling out incrementally starting in spring 2022; and grant recipients are required to deposit the digital research data, metadata, and code supporting published research conclusions into a digital repository, in line with FAIR principles and disciplinary norms, where ethical, cultural, legal, and commercial considerations allow.
Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications
Released in 2015, the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications requires that peer-reviewed journal publications resulting from Tri-Agency-funded research be freely accessible within 12 months of publication — either by publishing in a journal that offers immediate or delayed (within 12 months) open access, or by archiving the peer-reviewed manuscript in an institutional or disciplinary open-access repository within the same 12-month window.
Tri-Council Policy Statement (TCPS2) on research ethics
Human-subjects research ethics review across all three agencies is governed by the TCPS2 (Tri-Council Policy Statement), the shared ethical framework Canadian institutions apply through their Research Ethics Boards for any Tri-Agency-funded research involving human participants — one policy, applied uniformly, rather than a separate ethics standard per council.
How the Tri-Agency system compares to other national models
Canada’s three-council-by-subject-matter structure is a genuinely different organizing principle from the funding systems in the UK and the US, which matters for anyone doing comparative or cross-border research administration.
- United Kingdom (UKRI): UK Research and Innovation consolidates what were nine separate research councils, Research England, and Innovate UK under a single umbrella organization, with the individual councils (such as EPSRC, MRC, ESRC) retained as disciplinary divisions inside UKRI rather than as fully independent statutory agencies. Canada’s Tri-Agency, by contrast, keeps CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC as three separate statutory federal agencies that jointly administer shared programs and policies (TIPS, TAGFA, the RDM and Open Access policies) without merging into one parent body.
- United States: US federal research funding is spread across many independent agencies organized by government department or mission — the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for health research, the National Science Foundation (NSF) for science and engineering, plus mission agencies such as DOE and DOD — with no single joint secretariat or shared financial-administration guide comparable to TAGFA binding them together; each US agency sets its own data-management, public-access, and financial-administration rules independently (subject to common baseline requirements like the Uniform Guidance at 2 CFR 200), rather than sharing one policy layer the way CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC do.
The practical takeaway for a research administrator: Canada’s model means a single shared compliance framework (RDM, open access, ethics, financial administration) applies no matter which of the three agencies funds a given grant, so institutional policy and training can largely be written once and applied Tri-Agency-wide — a structural convenience the fragmented US model, and to a lesser extent the consolidated-but-still-multi-council UKRI model, don’t offer in quite the same form.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Canada Research Chairs Program run by one specific agency?
No. It is a genuine Tri-Agency initiative, jointly administered by CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC, with day-to-day operations handled by the Tri-agency Institutional Programs Secretariat (TIPS) at SSHRC rather than by any single council. See Canada Research Chair (CRC) for the program’s tier structure and nomination process.
Do all three agencies require a Data Management Plan?
DMP requirements are set by the shared Tri-Agency Research Data Management Policy, but which specific funding opportunities require a DMP at application time is rolled out incrementally and varies by competition — check the specific funding opportunity notice for the current requirement rather than assuming it applies uniformly to every program.
Can a single research project receive funding from more than one Tri-Agency council?
It’s possible for genuinely interdisciplinary or partnered work, though each agency generally expects a project to have one clearly identified home agency based on its primary research content; co-funding across councils is the exception rather than the default route.
How does the Tri-Agency system relate to the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI)?
CFI is a separate, non-Tri-Agency federal funder that funds research infrastructure and capital equipment rather than operating grants or personnel; it is not administered by CIHR, NSERC, or SSHRC and typically works alongside Tri-Agency funding rather than as part of it.
For the broader landscape of grant types and mechanisms this system sits within, see Types of Grants: A Research Funding Taxonomy and Pre-Award vs. Post-Award Office Roles. For CASRAI’s full grants-management coverage, see the Grants Management pillar.
