Honourable members of the Standing Committee on Science and Research, I thank you for inviting me to testify on research and publishing in French in Canada.
First, let me sum up my experience in a few words, on the basis of which I will testify today. My research is in theoretical physical chemistry. I'm a full professor and head of the department of chemistry and physics at Mount Saint Vincent University in Nova Scotia. I've just completed a four-year term as a member and the outgoing chair of the Interdisciplinary Adjudication Committee of the Canada Research Chairs. I'm a member of the board of directors of the Chemical Institute of Canada. I'm a member of Acfas-Acadie as the regional representative for Nova Scotia, under the leadership of our committee chair Dr. Selma Zaiane‑Ghalia. Having said that, let me be clear: In this testimony, I'm not invoking the authority of any institution or organization. I'm testifying as an individual, in my own name.
Centuries ago, the lingua franca of science was Latin, the linguistic ancestor of French and all Romance languages. Sir Isaac Newton himself chose Latin over his native English when he wrote his Philosophiæ naturalis principia mathematica, which deals with the mathematical principles of natural philosophy. Today, English is the lingua franca of science, but this is relatively recent. It began when the United States emerged as a superpower after World War II.
In the past, it was common to publish in other languages. For example, Albert Einstein's four articles from 1905 were published in German. The same was true of the papers by Schrödinger and Max Planck, which laid the foundation for quantum mechanics as we know it today. Louis Pasteur, Henri Poincaré, Marie Curie and many others published in French.
A few years ago, I came across a fine paper by Dr. Alain Aspect, who has just been named co-laureate of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum entanglement, the phenomenon underlying all modern advanced quantum information technologies. He published this paper in the prestigious, but not well-cited Bulletin de l'Union des physiciens, or BUP, a French-only publication based in Paris. However, this is not an isolated case. The BUP has published a great number of articles by French and francophone physicists and chemists, including several Nobel laureates, among them the legendary Louis de Boglie.
This little example demonstrates that leading scientists publish in French. Why do they do it? More generally, why publish in French? In my opinion, as a vehicle of thought, language modulates how we think. We're influenced by the cultural heritage associated with our language, as well as its nuances and ways of thinking. Do you really need to understand the lyrics to recognize a Cuban salsa, an Argentine tango, or Greek or Russian folk music? Musical phraseology emerges from the linguistic culture in which it's embedded. The same is true in other areas of the intellectual universe. The limits of our language are the limits of our world, as Ludwig Wittgenstein often argued in his Tractatus logico-philosophicus.
I will conclude with some practical suggestions—I can't think they are entirely original—for enriching francophone scholarship in Canada.
First, there should be an adequate budget quota for submissions in French to Canada's three granting councils.
Secondly, the shortcomings of evaluation committees that do not have members with a sufficient command of both French and the technical subject matter of a proposal should be addressed by replacing them with external members who can be recruited from a global database of French-speaking reviewers.
Third, I propose to establish a leading multidisciplinary general scientific journal in Canada in the French language.
Fourth, high visibility scientific conferences in the French language, such as the Conférence de chimie théorique et numérique, or QUITEL, should be encouraged and funded. I will be able to say more about this during the question period.
Fifth, I suggest that students be allowed to...