Thank you for your question, Mr. Tochor. It definitely echoes my recommendation that a specific support program be created for research in French.
As we said, and as my colleague Éric Forgues indicated, we work at small universities where the research departments are, in some instances, very limited. We are setting up a research department at my university. I and another person are the only ones working on establishing that department. We don't always have the necessary support or resources to set up this kind of department. In small universities, especially like ours, we have colleagues who also think that research is important. At a large university, such as the University of Ottawa, where I worked for 30 years, conducting research in French is an issue because it's highly underappreciated. For example, we're regularly asked to publish in English, if we want rankings and public recognition. So we need support to encourage publication in French and to promote the development of research departments.
At English-language universities where francophones work, they're entitled, thanks to the research councils, to submit their files in French, but no one at those institutions can read them. This is a major problem. We have to prepare files in French in order to submit them, but we also have to prepare them in English so they can be read at our universities. When we appear before ethics committees, people can't read our estimates, especially for conducting research in French. These are all examples that illustrate the problem.
Then there's the whole issue of publications. When it comes to developing or working on journals, we're the only ones doing the work. I'm the director of the journal Enjeux et société, and we can't count on any other resources. We aren't at universities that provide support in this area. We can't offer our professors any relief because we're short of professors for teaching. We can't ask students to help us prepare review files or even set up files because, in many instances, we don't have the master's or doctoral programs that would enable us to recruit those students.
In other words, there's a general lack of resources at our institutions that prevents us from conducting research in French.
I don't know if that answers your question. I can cite some other examples, but it seems to me the ones I've given speak for themselves.