ScienceUpFirst’s $20.7 Million Sweetheart Deal
Directed Grants, Fast-Tracked Funding, and the Illusion of Independence
ScienceUpFirst (SUF) has been sold to Canadians as a neutral defender of truth — a fact-checking, myth-busting platform standing between the public and “misinformation.” Yet Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) records obtained and analyzed by Regina Watteel, PhD tell a far less flattering story.
They reveal that millions in taxpayer dollars flowed to SUF through direct high-level access, expedited directed grants, internal “creative” funding workarounds, presidential sign-offs, administrative approvals, and heavily redacted reviews that obscure who made key decisions and why.
This was not ordinary grantmaking, it was preferential treatment.
SUF launched in 2021 with $1.75 million from PHAC’s Immunization Partnership Fund, framed as a time-limited pilot to counter COVID-era misinformation. When that funding approached its scheduled conclusion in 2022, SUF did not have to re-enter the system through an open, competitive call.
Instead, its founders went straight to senior decision-makers.
A sitting senator lobbied cabinet ministers on behalf of an initiative he co-founded.
Timothy Caulfield emailed the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) president directly requesting urgent bridge funding. Internal emails show officials scrambling to identify what they themselves described as “creative funding opportunities.”
Within weeks, SUF secured $1.5 million from CIHR.
No open competition. No external peer review. No level playing field.
Most Canadian researchers spend months — often years — navigating fiercely competitive funding processes with low success rates. SUF’s pathway looked very different. Internal correspondence shows direct appeals to leadership, expedited administrative handling, and rapid presidential approvals. CIHR officials even discussed forming a “coalition of the willing,” effectively coordinating support across departments rather than directing SUF toward standard funding mechanisms.
The bureaucracy did not simply approve funding, it constructed a pathway.
In 2023, CIHR awarded SUF another $1.5 million, framed as an extension. The evaluation process consisted of an internal administrative review, conducted during a brief meeting, without independent external assessment. Reviewer names were redacted. Scores were redacted. Substantive evaluation comments were redacted.
The deeper concern is not just how SUF was funded, but what that funding supports. SUF is not a research institute generating original scientific discoveries. It is a PR platform positioned to influence how Canadians interpret science, which claims are amplified, and which are dismissed as misinformation.
When government channels tens of millions of taxpayer dollars into a single federally backed initiative tasked with defining misinformation, they are not merely supporting science communication. — They are financing a crafted narrative.
One organization gains disproportionate influence over public discourse, while alternative interpretations — including those grounded in legitimate scientific debate — face structural disadvantage. This dynamic risks narrowing the boundaries of acceptable discussion and recasting disagreement as deviance.
Timothy Caulfield is far from a neutral participant in Canadian health debates. For years, he has cultivated a public profile that openly challenges — and often ridicules — natural health practices, supplements and alternative approaches, while casting persistent skepticism on the organic and holistic health movements. Through books, columns and frequent media appearances, Caulfield has framed what he calls “wellness culture” as a breeding ground for misinformation, regularly portraying non-pharmaceutical health perspectives as misguided or unscientific.
Caulfield has simultaneously built a national brand urging Canadians to trust scientific and government institutions and reject misinformation. Yet the funding trail surrounding SUF reveals an uncomfortable tension: a highly visible academic and media authority associated with an initiative that benefited from directed, fast-tracked taxpayer funding approved through opaque administrative processes rather than open, competitive review.
Canadians are entitled to ask whether an unknown applicant or an initiative challenging government policy would have received similar treatment.
Public trust in science depends not on messaging campaigns, but on fairness, independence and transparency. When funding flows through privileged access, when evaluation trails are obscured, and when competitive safeguards appear flexible for well-connected applicants, confidence in public institutions is inevitably damaged.
At minimum, these disclosures create the appearance of preferential treatment and institutional capture — concerns Canadians cannot afford to ignore and must continue to scrutinize — online and off.
Read Regina Watteel’s Full Investigation HERE where she lays out the ATIP disclosures, internal emails and funding trail in detail.
🔥ScienceUpFirst’s $20.7 MILLION Taxpayer Scandal
🧐ATIPs reveal:
– Lobbying cabinet heavyweights
– Direct access to CIHR President
– “Creative” funding workarounds
– Insider facilitation & coordination
– Rapid presidential approvals
– Administrative rubber stamps
– Heavy… pic.twitter.com/nwen4JZt8K— Regina Watteel (@ReginaWatteel) February 6, 2026
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