Since 1998, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada has distributed $28.15 billion across 670,531 grants. Behind that figure lie two competing visions of Canadian science: fund everyone a little, or make a few very large bets.
Little known outside academia, the Discovery Grant is the backbone of the system. Over 26 years, NSERC awarded 217,468 of them, totalling $7.47 billion. It is the most-funded NSERC programme by far, representing 32% of all identifiable programme spending.
The Discovery Grant is designed to support investigator-led research. It targets no particular industry or societal challenge. It funds curiosity. The average — roughly $34,000 per grant — covers a research assistant for a year plus supplies. It is not a windfall: it is a licence to keep working.
This model of small amounts distributed widely stands in contrast to the direction of the past two decades. NSERC has simultaneously built a parallel track of a very different scale.
Over 26 years, NSERC distributed an average of $287 million per year in Discovery Grants alone. That exceeds the annual research budget of the University of Sherbrooke or the University of Manitoba. A quiet programme, but one that structures the entire Canadian university research system.
Ontario dominates: 256,960 grants totalling $10.86 billion, or 38% of all NSERC funding. Quebec follows with roughly 138,000 grants and $6.9 billion (25%). Together, these two provinces capture 63% of total funding.
British Columbia ranks third at $3.70 billion (13%), Alberta at $2.88 billion (10%). The remaining provinces trail far behind: Saskatchewan at $980 million, Nova Scotia at $950 million, Manitoba at $660 million.
This concentration largely reflects research capacity: Toronto, McGill, UBC, and Alberta are among the country's largest research universities. But it also raises a structural tension. Funding in the natural sciences compounds the advantages of institutions already resourced to file competitive applications. The advantage accumulates.
Since the early 2000s, NSERC has progressively added programmes designed to fund not hundreds of researchers, but a handful of nationally strategic projects.
The Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF) embodies this shift: only 159 grants, totalling $1.03 billion. The average exceeds $6.5 million per grant. The programme targets "clusters of research excellence" — initiatives capable of repositioning a university on the global map.
The Canada Research Chairs account for $2.07 billion across 15,870 appointments. They fund exceptional individual researchers at levels far above a Discovery Grant. Alliance Grants, which fund university-industry collaboration, total $950 million across 8,600 grants.
The chart below positions each programme on two axes: number of grants and total funding. Bubble size represents average grant size. The tension between the Discovery model (many, small) and the CFREF model (few, enormous) becomes immediately readable.
In 1998, NSERC distributed $476 million. By 2024, that figure had reached $1.37 billion. The budget nearly tripled in nominal terms over the period.
The curve does not rise uniformly. A first acceleration occurs in the 2000-2009 period, when Canada invested heavily in research infrastructure. After 2012, growth stalled, even dipping slightly. Then, from 2016, the pace resumed: $1.14 billion in 2016, $1.27 billion in 2018, reaching a peak of $1.425 billion in 2020.
The 2020 figure reflects emergency pandemic programmes. Funding then eased in 2021 and 2022 before recovering in 2024. Canadian science does not progress insulated from political cycles.
NSERC funds two parallel Canadian sciences: one made up of thousands of researchers receiving small Discovery Grants to explore freely; another made up of a few large institutions receiving hundreds of millions for excellence initiatives. Both approaches coexist, but the balance is shifting toward the big bets. From $476 million in 1998 to $1.37 billion in 2024, the budget has nearly tripled. The question is not how much, but how it is distributed.
This analysis covers NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) grants available through the GrantData API. Data spans 1998 to 2024.
GrantData
award_amount) by fiscal year.You can reproduce and extend this analysis via the GrantData API.
Explore 670,000 Canadian research grants. Filter by programme, province, university, or year. Every number in this article comes from API calls you can reproduce.
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