Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ladies and gentlemen of the committee, good evening.
I am the vice-president of the Research Grants and Scholarships Directorate at the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, or NSERC.
NSERC is a federal research funding agency. It supports 11,000 of Canada's best researchers each year and also provides scholarships and fellowships to students and postdoctoral fellows. Each year, NSERC invests close to $1 billion in research and in the next generation of innovators.
At NSERC, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, we support research and talent in both official languages. Applicants choose the language they want to use with us.
NSERC has the capability to assess applications in both English and French. Ninety-nine per cent of our personnel meet the language requirements of their positions. One hundred per cent of our literature, instructions and guides are published in both languages.
NSERC also recruits external scientific experts to assess the scientific excellence of the grant applications that are submitted to us. They provide NSERC with advice on the excellence of the research grant applications. Every evaluation committee we form has the ability to assess applications in French and in English. Over 10 years of data from our selection committees shows that 26% of the membership of those expert committees are francophones, and 45% of the membership are bilingual.
Madam Chair, NSERC has the people, the expertise and the processes to fairly assess the merit of grant applications regardless of the language they are written in. Despite having those capabilities at NSERC, only 10% of the applications we receive, on average, are submitted in French. Some have suggested that researchers may not submit their grant applications in French because they fear the granting councils may not process them fairly. The data does not support that view.
For example, grant applications submitted in French from McGill University or the University of Ottawa have, on average, a higher success rate compared to applications submitted by the same universities in English. Applications from other universities show different trends and sometimes the opposite of what I just mentioned here.
The success rate is influenced by many factors, likely more closely linked to the demographic context of the institution and also the support provided by the institution for French-language grant applications, amongst other factors.
English, as mentioned earlier, is the dominant language in research around the world. In Canada and at NSERC, however, we need to maintain our current ways of doing business, which allow us to evaluate applications for funding in both languages and avoid bias in the evaluation of applications in any language.
NSERC is also very proactive — I emphasize that word — in promoting the importance of science to francophones in Canada. We have two annual science promotion campaigns, Odyssey of Science and Science Literacy Week, in which francophones are actively involved. Our partners in Quebec have offered over 450 science promotion activities in French.
In addition, NSERC provided funding to nearly 30 francophone organizations to organize science promotion activities in French.
In summary, NSERC is able to evaluate applications for funding in both official languages, and it finds no striking pattern of systemic discrimination in the evaluation of applications, whether submitted in French or English.
We want to work with universities to combat the perception that it is more difficult to get NSERC funding if the application is submitted in French. We can work together to support researchers who want to do research in French.
Madam Chair, members of the committee, thank you for your attention.