The committee began its study of the report of the external advisory panel on the creation and dissemination of scientific information in French, hearing from Acfas, the Association of Canadian University Presses, the Association des collèges et universités de la francophonie canadienne, the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada, and the Université du Québec.
Martin Maltais and Sophie Montreuil of Acfas said the advisory panel's report mentions their Service d'aide à la recherche en français (SARF) only in its diagnosis, never among its twelve recommendations, even though the service already operationalizes several of them. They reported 19 agreements with institutions in six provinces, 60-odd revised grant applications with a 30% success rate, and a network of 75 advisers, and noted new agreements with NSERC and forthcoming ones with the other councils. They asked for a transitional budget allocation to the three granting agencies for two pilot programs, "Francophone Missions" for grants and "Emerging Talent" for graduate scholarships, and for SARF's long-term funding, $600,000 a year after the current official languages action plan ends in 2028, to be folded into the proposed research in French support fund. They stressed that the SARF and the proposed secretariat operate at different scales and should complement rather than duplicate each other.
David Larsen of the Association of Canadian University Presses endorsed the report's scholarly communications chapter and warned that its recommendations must be implemented quickly given his members' financial strain. He highlighted that the awards to scholarly publications program has not increased in 20 years, that there is no dedicated government funding for scholarly book publishing, and that translation support is insufficient. He supported raising the basic grant from $8,000 to $12,000, reserving grants for French-language and bilingual presses in minority settings, quadrupling national translation grants from five to 20 a year with more frequent intakes, and funding dissemination platforms and metadata work, noting that open access does not remove reliance on book sales.
Martin Normand of the Association des collèges et universités de la francophonie canadienne broadly endorsed the panel's three recommendations and called for a compliance and accountability framework covering all federal institutions with scientific or data-production responsibilities, not just the granting agencies, singling out Global Affairs Canada ahead of a possible 2028 Sommet de la Francophonie. He revived his organization's call for a pan-Canadian coordination mechanism on French-language post-secondary education, and argued that the "AI for All" strategy treats substantive equality as a blind spot, so francophone research centres should be supported as francophone missions. He asked the committee to unequivocally support the three recommendations and press federal institutions to work with stakeholders on next steps.
Liane Roy of the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada framed research in French as a matter of substantive equality under the modernized Official Languages Act and said the missing ingredient is conditions and resources, not will or expertise. She called for language-disaggregated, detailed, regularly produced and public data, and supported making the survey on the official language minority population permanent and monitoring French-language enrolment and graduation trends. She recommended that the government develop, with minority communities, additional tools so federal institutions can collect, produce and analyze evidence on official languages needs and outcomes, and asked the committee to support all of the panel's measures.
Réal Daigneault and Ghyslain Gagnon of the Université du Québec described systemic barriers and a Matthew effect concentrating resources, citing a decline in francophone universities' share of federal research funding from about 20% in the early 2000s to under 15% today and only eight of the first 64 Eddie Goldenberg chairs going to francophone institutions. They recommended reserving 25% of federal academic research funding for francophone institutions, including those outside Quebec, as a floor with a catch-up logic, arguing this does not challenge peer review and is the lever most within federal jurisdiction. Gagnon said the Université du Québec fares better in Quebec's provincial funding competitions than federally, and pointed to Acfas's SARF and evaluation criteria that credit societal impact as complementary measures; Daigneault added that research in French is a whole process of training, partnerships and knowledge transfer, not only publication.
Members questioned witnesses on the 30% success rate, the low share of new chairs, race-based measures in the report, AI translation quality and terminology differences; witnesses largely defended the SARF's record and the report's framing. The meeting closed with brief procedural discussion about extending future meetings and holding subcommittee planning sessions, and a Conservative member asked to consult a colleague before responding to a request, with no motion or vote recorded.
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