There's no single answer to this question.
As I mentioned, at NSERC, we work very hard to ensure that the evaluation of grant applications is fair. I say that humbly.
Since there are variations among academic institutions, it's unlikely that success rates will vary because of NSERC processes, because the same processes are applied to all universities.
Variations in success rates for English or French applications by institution appear to be due to several factors.
So there's not just one factor at play. For example, careers at the graduate level, both master's and doctoral, must be encouraged in French. We need to stimulate French-language publishing and support universities. As I said earlier, we need to demystify the issue of success rates.
Success rates in French and English vary between NSERC, SSHRC in the humanities and CIHR in the health sciences. So we shouldn't generalize. There's still work to be done to demystify things in this regard.
A witness earlier talked about training to eliminate unconscious bias. We already offer this type of training. There's still work to be done on that, and we could do better, but there's a collective effort to be made. I don't believe that all of these variations stem from a single cause or factor.
We do a lot in terms of promoting science in French, and I mentioned several hundred activities. We could do more, of course.