Thank you for the question.
It's clearly a strong trend, and we won't be able to counter it completely. On the other hand, the comparison with France is flawed. France is a country where French is of course used by the majority. All its researchers are subject to the same imperatives.
The situation is different in Canada. There are two groups of researchers within the Canadian research community, and they are not subject to the same imperatives or conditions. The ground rules promote one group at the expense of the other. There is an equity issue in research produced in Canada. Francophone researchers and future generations of francophones must be able to pursue a career in research.
This means that researchers need appropriate conditions if they are to develop and learn how to help build a body of significant knowledge for their environment. They also need opportunities to disseminate their research, but not exclusively in French. They require favourable conditions for a broad dissemination of their efforts, and they should not be responsible for shouldering these tasks.
That's why we suggested encouragement for open publication, with free access in both languages. Researchers shouldn't be communicating with one another in a vacuum. We want their research findings to be widely disseminated.
With the forms of communications available to us today, it's clearly possible to disseminate research results in both languages at the same time. Researchers doing their work in French, however, can of course avail themselves of translation services. They shouldn't have to produce papers in both languages on their own.