Science and Research Committee on Oct. 17th, 2022

[Annie Pilote]

I am not aware of what Professor Sylvie Lamoureux said in her testimony to your committee, but language is certainly what is used to convey ideas. That's why people talk about equity. Some francophone researchers have to work under conditions that require them to think, write and produce in an intellectual space that is not their own. This hinders creativity and, to some degree, determines what research subjects they choose.

It's very important, particularly in the training of future generations, to enable young francophone researchers to learn about the important schools of thought in their discipline, in their own language, without however limiting themselves to these scholarly approaches.

As I was saying, the problem goes well beyond words. What we're talking about is theories, and ways of viewing the world that are conveyed within these linguistic spheres.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you very much.

Apart from creating a fund for the self-service you alluded to earlier, what specific measures could the federal government take to help humanities researchers work in their own language, including francophone researchers?

[Annie Pilote]

Funding is very important, beginning with university graduate work. Researchers need help to publish the findings of their research. That's because if the existing funding programs do not allow researchers to report on their research work, there will be nothing to communicate.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

I have a correction to make. I used the words self-service earlier, but I meant to say open access.

Mr. Normand, what could the federal government do to provide better support and mentoring for francophone researchers in Quebec and Canada?

[Martin Normand]

Ms. Pilote was putting you on the right track. It's absolutely essential to work with the granting councils.

There is indeed the matter of funding, but more needs to be done about the equitable assessment of grant applications submitted to the councils.

Over the past few months, we've been working with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the CIHR, to design training modules on unconscious bias in the assessment of grant applications. Can assessors, owing to their position, introduce bias into how they perceive and understand research projects submitted to them?

We're trying to look at the content of these tools and how we might prevent bias in terms of language and the research topics chosen by francophone researchers.

These tools should be used well beyond the CIHR. All the granting councils should have access to them.

Let's take the obvious example of simultaneous interpretation at the peer assessment committee meetings, where the language skills of the assessors are self-declared.

Assessors who consider themselves to have a high enough level of proficiency in French to read and understand a French-language application may be misled when comments are poorly translated or when the references cited are misunderstood. This could lead to a researcher's application being negatively assessed when that same application might have been accepted by another committee with someone more proficient in French.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you very much.

You spoke about the crux of the matter, which is funding.

Have you considered the possibility of having quotas, as does Telefilm Canada in the audiovisual world, and the Canada Council for literature?

Have we got to the point where we should be thinking about that here in Canada, in 2022?

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Monsieur Blanchette-Joncas, I'm sorry. It's been six minutes. Perhaps you could ask if someone would like to table an answer for you.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

I'll take note of that question, Madam Chair.

We will certainly have an opportunity to continue this discussion later.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you so much, Monsieur Blanchette-Joncas.

With that, we will now go to Mr. Cannings for six minutes, please.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you.

Thanks again to the witnesses for being here with us.

I want to turn to Mr. Sévigny to get back to this question of publishing in the lingua franca of English and all that flows from that. It seems to be one of the underlying issues here.

First of all, Monsieur Sévigny, could you just repeat the data you have for the 40-year trends in publication in French and English from France and Canada? I was trying to rapidly write that down and I got bogged down.

[Benoit Sévigny]

This was the Web of Science, where it was demonstrated that over the past 40 years, from 1980 to 2020, the percentage of papers published in French in the natural sciences and engineering around the world dropped from approximately 4% to one-tenth of 1%. In Canada, this percentage dropped from 3% to 1% and in Quebec, from 14% to one-quarter of 1%.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Okay. Thank you.

I'm just wondering. I've heard various suggestions here on how we might turn that around with open access, simultaneous translation or having various countries of la Francophonie I guess co-operate in promoting this. But if it seems that, for instance, publication of scientific articles in France has essentially gone to zero in French, and it's all in English, I'm just wondering whether we should be concentrating on the other aspects of this in terms of finding ways of funding programs in French and supporting those French programs.

Perhaps I can ask you one more question, Mr. Sévigny, because you're sort of associated with the funding councils. How should we be assessing the strength or power of the science behind the various applicants if...? I assume that traditionally it's largely done through the publication record. Part of that record is citations, and citations are all about who's reading your work and who's citing it. That seems to be circling around English now.

Are there other ways we should be looking at that? Are there discussions on how to change that? Somebody talked about unconscious bias or subconscious bias. This is even conscious bias, I think, if we're talking about citations of English articles, basically.

[Benoit Sévigny]

The Fonds de recherche du Québec contributed to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, the idea being to establish how much weight should be attributed to highly influential journals in assessing grant applications. This is something that has been heavily challenged in terms of assessing applications, and young scientists have been sending us exactly the same message.

Something else besides a researcher's education and career need to be factored in. Dissemination to the general public needs to be taken more seriously, and highly influential journals should perhaps be assigned slightly less weight. That is perhaps where there might be suggestions for further encouraging publication in French and for giving more recognition to all journals.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Perhaps I'll turn to Professor Pilote and Monsieur Normand to comment on that.

Should we be looking at the publication records so much, if that seems to have gone so much to English throughout the Francophonie and not just in Canada? In fact, in my Google searches I've come across comments on the web that say if you want to find scientific articles in French, the best place to look for them is in Canadian journals. We do more of it than France does.

I'm wondering if you could comment on that. Should we be concentrating on the publication side?

[Annie Pilote]

Thank you for the question.

Is there enough time for me to answer, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

You have 30 seconds.

[Annie Pilote]

I'm going to expand upon Mr. Sévigny's proposal. The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment suggests many potential avenues for dealing with this issue.

Canada's research culture needs to be changed. That's not just applicable to research in French, but changes would definitely contribute if we could broaden the criteria for assessing the quality of research work and assign more weight to all the different benefits of research.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, Professor Pilote and Mr. Cannings.

We will now go to the five-minute rounds. It's a very collegial committee. I understand that the Conservatives have been very gracious and have given their five minutes to Monsieur Blanchette-Joncas.

You have five minutes, please.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Sévigny, I have several questions. Please answer as briefly as possible.

Last November, the Government of Quebec announced the introduction of an assistance service for research in French, something that had been proposed by Acfas in its 2021 report.

Can you tell us why this program is important?

[Benoit Sévigny]

I'm sorry, but I don't know much about that program.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Okay.

Let's move on to another topic.

For research in French in Quebec, can you tell me more about how significant English is at the moment in Quebec research, even though the province is mainly francophone?

[Benoit Sévigny]

Given that we administer a research fund, we naturally acknowledge two language communities, one anglophone and one francophone, at McGill University and Concordia University.

For natural sciences, as well as in engineering and health sciences, very few journals are published in French. There are many more in social sciences and the humanities, on the other hand, and we support approximately 40 of them.

We at Fonds de recherche du Québec have also noted that quite a few of the research grant applications are written in English. That doesn't just happen at the federal level; it's also the case in Quebec. It's allowed, of course. We require that the abstract and the title be in French, but people are free to submit their applications in French or English.,

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Sévigny.

Are you currently seeing a decline in French-language research in Quebec?

[Benoit Sévigny]

We have in fact noted a decline in research publication in French.