Thank you, Madam Chair. My first set of questions is for Professor Cardinal, who co-chaired the panel that produced this report.
Your report says, on page 79, that there is an “absence of readily accessible data combining language of study, underrepresented groups and socio-economic status”. It then says, “This lack of information precludes any rigorous assessment of [the] needs or participation” of racialized French-speaking students.
However, your panel immediately recommends, on page 12, that we need to establish, number one, “dedicated [race-based] scholarships” specifically for “racialized students studying in French” and, number two, “dedicated [race-based] funding and hiring targets for racialized” professors.
How did the panel go from saying that there's not enough available information for a rigorous assessment to all of a sudden recommending race-based scholarships for students and race-based hiring targets for professors and researchers?