Can we all see the concern here?

This is Joseph. 

The main Canadian medical grading agency, CIHR, decides to bypass peer review rankings:

In some cases, that meant proposals with lower scores from peer reviewers jumped ahead of those with better scores.

For example, Dylan MacKay, a nutritional biochemist at the University of Manitoba, submitted a proposal to compare two approaches to treating kidney disease. Peer reviewers ranked it fourth out of 130 proposals. But the proposal was not one of the 22 selected for funding by the second round of reviewers. MacKay was shocked. “No one has seen anything like this at CIHR,” he says. “We never thought they wouldn’t follow the peer-review order.”

A spokesperson for CIHR says applications were rated on how well they addressed one of several strategic objectives, including better preparing Canada to respond to pandemics. But those objectives were not listed in the original call for proposals.

 Even if done in complete good faith, this is a terrible idea. A hidden set of review criteria that are not made part of the competition is the sort of thing that can, all too easily, become a pathway to politically determined outcomes. After all, a slip of the tongue by an official could give a competitor an extremely important advantage in drafting a grant if this was decided in advance (it's even worse if this was added after seeing the initial peer review rankings). 

In a non-science context, this sort of post-hoc ranking of grants has gone quite wrong. It shakes trust by applicants and reduces the engagement of peer reviewers (why work to get the best possible ranking when external criteria will be the primary method used to determine awards). 

What are the hidden criteria? Here:

1. Strong and coordinated governance: Enabling rapid decision-making, informed by experts; and, to ensure our investments achieve maximum impact.
2. Laying a solid foundation by strengthening research systems and the talent pipeline: From post-secondary institutions, research hospitals and Canadian scientists, we are supporting the foundational inputs necessary to have a healthy life sciences ecosystem. Afterall, there is no point having a state-of-the-art factory if we don't have the people and talent to run it.
3. Growing businesses by doubling down on existing and emerging areas of strength: We will continue to support Made-in-Canada solutions through the Strategic Innovation Fund to rebuild the sector. We have a strong pipeline of projects across the country that will create thousands of good jobs for Canadians while closing key gaps in our biomanufacturing supply chain.
4. Building public capacity: Taking advantage of the new capacity coming online at Canada's National Research Council, including its new Biologics Manufacturing Centre. With this new facility built ahead of schedule, we will be able to produce vaccines for whatever the future may hold.
5. Enabling innovation by ensuring world class regulation: Lastly, this will make Canada a more attractive destination for leading life sciences firms to establish and grow. Overall, this will help us grow a strong and competitive domestic life sciences sector, and ensure Canada's readiness for future pandemics or other health emergencies.

Some of this is quite good policy but, when applied to a clinical trials grant competition, it is hard not to notice how it would really advantage anybody with an industry connect (e.g., #3 is clearly aligned with businesses). Had this been announced as a part of the grant announcement, applicants could have decided to either directly address these pillars in the proposal or to decline to put in the effort of preparing an application. 

For one competition, this is admittedly a minor concern. But the reason for concern is that this could end up being very toxic to science in Canada without much imagination.