Official Languages committee  We're a network of researchers, so I can't speak to where different researchers are getting their funding. Some of them are university-based. Some of them are in Japan. Some are in universities in the Netherlands. It's a network. We fund occasional projects with researchers, depending on the money we get, but most of them get funding through their own institutions, and some of them are retired or independent researchers who don't get any funding.

Official Languages committee  Regarding your first question, Mr. Beaulieu spoke at length about funding in relation to the weight of the minority. I believe that he was referring to a study by Frédéric Lacroix, which shows that English‑language universities receive more funding in relation to the weight of the minority.

Official Languages committee  No, I don't think it's outrageous. In any event, I don't see why you're talking about the 1960s, since it's now 2024.

Official Languages committee  What we do is steer the discussion back to funding of the research ecosystem on minority language communities. For one thing, there are 37 francophone research centres and one anglophone research centre. We focused our brief today on that.

Official Languages committee  I can't speak to the funding for all universities.

Official Languages committee  You would have to invite the university presidents if you want to discuss this issue.

Official Languages committee  I see what indicators you're using. You're referring to a study by Frédéric Lacroix that talks about university funding relative to the demographic weight of the minority. That study has been strongly criticized by researchers like Jean-Pierre Corbeil for making a false equivalency.

Official Languages committee  There's no evidence that it serves to anglicize francophones.

Official Languages committee  In the 1960s, 30% of anglophones were bilingual. Today, it's 70%, and for young people, it's nearly 80%. It's a community—

Official Languages committee  Yes, we absolutely agree.

Official Languages committee  I don't know if they were overfunded, but they did have a bigger budget at one time.

Official Languages committee  Our research network comprises about 80 researchers, and a third of those researchers are francophone. We have researchers interested in English-speaking communities who come from a number of universities in Quebec, Canada and internationally. So at Concordia, we do work with a lot of universities, not in isolation.

Official Languages committee  No.

Official Languages committee  I don't have the data on federal funding. However, according to the data on provincial funding, funding per student is the same at all universities, English-language and French-language alike.