Science and Research

The committee resumed its study of the external advisory panel's report on the creation and dissemination of scientific information in French, hearing first from two witnesses connected to the report and then from officials of the three federal granting agencies.

Linda Cardinal, emeritus professor at the University of Ottawa and former co-chair of the external advisory panel, framed research in French as a matter of substantive equality under the Official Languages Act, citing systemic bias, low French application volumes at CIHR and NSERC, and a success rate roughly ten percentage points below average for research in francophone minority contexts. She highlighted the panel's recommendation of a $40-million annual fund for research in French—about 1% of total research funding—alongside a secretariat for research in French, francophone "missions" programs, and a government lead-by-example role including bilingual abstracts for federal researchers. She asked the government to accept all panel recommendations and publish an implementation road map with timelines, and said she would answer in writing a member's question about how skin colour correlates with linguistic ability.

Tanja Niemann, executive director of Consortium Érudit, described the platform as Canada's digital research dissemination infrastructure, publishing nearly 400 journals and over 250,000 documents, with 75% of consultations from outside Canada and French articles in bilingual journals consulted about twice as often as English ones. She warned that discoverability and preservation work is ongoing while funding remains ad hoc, and asked that infrastructure like Érudit be recognized as an essential service with stable, predictable, longer-cycle funding, and that NSERC and CIHR join SSHRC in supporting French-language dissemination. She endorsed the report's $40-million recommendation and the diamond open access model, arguing commercial publishing fees divert public research money away from non-profit Canadian journals.

Sylvie Lamoureux, chief operating officer and vice-president of research at SSHRC, said the agency had taken note of the recommendations and was coordinating with the Canada research coordinating committee, noting that French applications generally succeed at rates comparable to or higher than English ones. She cited roughly $37.3 million invested in official languages research from 2021 to 2025, support for French journals and Érudit, and a newly created Impact Award for research in French, and said SSHRC was building a network of francophone granting agencies ahead of the 2028 Sommet de la Francophonie. She attributed lower success rates outside Quebec partly to Quebec's ecosystem of scaffolding programs and to historical gaps in French post-secondary access, and said she had received no specific Treasury Board instructions on implementing the Act.

Anne-Marie Thompson, vice-president at NSERC, said NSERC had participated in the panel's work, supports bilingual merit review, and signed a memorandum of understanding with Acfas's French-language research assistance service in June. She reported that French applications are about 3.1% of discovery grant applications and roughly 10% across the organization, that 27% of committee members are francophone and 47% bilingual, and that success-rate gaps appear mainly at smaller institutions and for early-career researchers rather than by language alone. She declined to state a position on the report's race-based scholarship and hiring recommendations, saying the agencies were still analyzing them and would respond formally, and confirmed NSERC had not adopted the funding-quota approach used by CIHR.

Chantal Marin-Comeau, vice-president at CIHR, said CIHR encourages applications in either official language, assigns French applications to qualified reviewers, and since 2021 has rebalanced project grant outcomes so the funded proportion of French applications at least matches the submitted proportion, with 2024 funding earmarked for francophone and official language minority community capacity. She described a francophone lens organized around four axes—strengthening research in French, access to funding and peer review, knowledge mobilization, and promotion and dissemination—and said CIHR works with communities, including official language minority communities, to set priorities. Paula Kirton, director general at CIHR, said 26% of reviewers can assess in French, which she presented as adequate given that only about 2% of applications arrive in French, and that translation supports are used within committees; she agreed more French applications and reviewers would be welcome.

Marcel Turcot, vice-president at NSERC, said self-identification data is protected under the Privacy Act, subject to restricted handling, and not shared, and that NSERC publishes millions of data records annually while reviewing how to improve data coordination. He and Thompson responded to questions about making language-disaggregated success-rate data public and about providing microdata to independent researchers, with Turcot noting past data requests to the committee and privacy constraints.

In the closing procedural discussion, members debated whether to hear from the interim chief statistician or wait for the new appointee before proceeding with a motion concerning that appearance, with Taleeb Noormohamed arguing the motion named the Chief Statistician specifically and Vincent Ho agreeing to wait for the new appointee rather than concede the motion. Jennifer McKelvie asked about the timing and scope of the summary of evidence, and the committee researcher confirmed it would cover themes from both oral testimony and written briefs.