Thank you for the invitation to appear today.
The federal Official Languages Act calls on the federal government to support OLMC vitality. Research is essential for actors and stakeholders to make evidence-based decisions that ensure OLMC vitality.
As the the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages stated, “The vitality of a community emerges from the assumption that it takes charge of its own development.” Must not this empowerment be based on better knowledge of themselves?
Today there are about a million Quebeckers whose first official language is English. This OLMC population, which makes important contributions to Quebec and Canada, is largely bilingual, well integrated in Quebec and committed to linguistic duality and bridging solitudes.
Nevertheless, research shows that this OLMC faces significant vitality challenges, including poverty, unemployment, high youth out-migration, barriers in access to services and being perceived as a threat to the vitality of Quebec's francophone majority. Research-based evidence is required to support our OLMC's vitality. To this end, the Quebec Community Groups Network recently recommended that the federal government invest in university-based research on English-speaking Quebec.
For francophone OLMCs, there is a large and complex research ecosystem. It includes approximately 13 research centres, including the Canadian Institute for Research on Linguistic Minorities, which was established in 2002 through a $10-million federal government endowment. The CIRLM used to provide $25,000 in annual funds to QUESCREN, funding that ended this March.
The ecosystem on francophone OLMCs also includes approximately 24 research chairs. This said, we acknowledge—and witnesses have said today—that the research ecosystem focused on francophone OLMCs faces challenges, including, of course, a predominance of English in academic scholarship.
The research ecosystem on English-speaking Quebec, on the other hand, has a different structure and challenges. For one thing, as a recent study by my colleagues Patrick Donovan, who is here today, and Shannon Bell indicates, the whole Quebec university sector is underfunded.
They also identified a misconception that Quebec's English-language universities receive more provincial funding than French-language ones. This misconception represents an obstacle to fruitful discussion about funding.
Also, supporting research on English-speaking Quebec has been less central to Quebec English-language university mandates. There are no research chairs on English-speaking Quebec, and there is only one research centre, QUESCREN. Housed at Concordia University, QUESCREN promotes the understanding and vitality of English-speaking Quebec through research, knowledge mobilization and other activities. Support for it comes from the Secrétariat aux relations avec les Québécois d'expression anglaise of the Government of Quebec, from Canadian Heritage and from Concordia.
Challenges to QUESCREN, which is the sole centre for research on English-speaking Quebec, shed light on challenges to the entire research ecosystem on the topic of English-speaking Quebec. Our challenges include limited funding that is also annual as opposed to continuing.
QUESCREN calls on the federal government to provide increased and sustained funding for both university-based research and the post-secondary research ecosystem that is focused on our OLMC. By doing so, the government would support both knowledge production and the infrastructures, such as universities and colleges, that are essential elements of a vital OLMC in Quebec.
Thank you.