Thank you for the question.
There are numerous factors at play, which go far beyond the reality of the organizations themselves. In the first part of the meeting, just before this one, it was pointed out that education is a provincial responsibility. We must first ensure that members of the teaching staff, whether at colleges or universities, have the necessary language skills and that these are assessed. As far as assessment is concerned, I am less concerned about whether they can speak French than about their reading ability. That is my opinion, as a human being called Sylvie Lamoureux.
Through the network we aim to establish with funding bodies, we will be able to recruit further people and expand this network so that our colleagues can also benefit from it. It was very interesting, last May, to have discussions with our colleagues from France. They mentioned that they receive a huge number of written requests in English in France, where the official language is French. They face the same challenges when it comes to finding assessors in all specific fields who are proficient in French. One of the reasons is that they are in extremely high demand. In Canada, we need these assessors for the Fonds de recherche du Québec. We need them for the federal granting councils. Consequently, this is a group of people who are in extremely high demand.
Furthermore, we are still living with the legacy of decisions dating back to the beginning of the last century concerning the possibility of being educated in one's own language—French—at post-secondary level, right through to the end of one's studies.
So, all these factors combine to explain the challenge of finding assessors to evaluate applications in French. We are doing everything we can to address this and increase that number.