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Research in French and Substantive Equality: An Opportunity

Report of the External Advisory Panel on the Creation and Dissemination of Scientific Information in French

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Abbreviations, acronyms and initialisms

ACFA
Association canadienne-française de l’Alberta
Act
Official Languages Act
ACUFC
Association des collèges et universités de la francophonie canadienne
ACUP
Association of Canadian University Presses
ASPP
Awards to Scholarly Publications Program
BCI
Bureau de coopération interuniversitaire
CCA
Canada Council for the Arts
CAUT
Canadian Association of University Teachers
CFI
Canada Foundation for Innovation
CIHR
Canadian Institutes of Health Research
CNFS
Consortium national de formation en santé
CRCC
Canada Research Coordinating Committee
CRCCF
Canada Research Chairs on the Canadian Francophonie
FCFA
Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada
FHSS
Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences of Canada
FJCF
Fédération de la jeunesse canadienne-française
FRQ
Fonds de recherche du Québec
INRS
Institut national de la recherche scientifique
IOF
International Organisation of La Francophonie
NRC
National Research Council Canada
NSERC
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
OLMC
Official language minority community
PCH
Canadian Heritage
RFSPF
Research in French Support and Promotion Fund
SARF
Service d’aide à la recherche en français
SCRF
Secretariat for the Coordination of Research in French
SSF
Société santé en français
SSHRC
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
STEM
Science, technology, engineering and mathematics
TBS
Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat

A word from the External Advisory Panel on the Creation and Dissemination of Scientific Information in French

French is a global language spoken every day on all five continents. The International Organisation of La Francophonie (IOF) estimates that French is spoken by 396 million speakers, making it the world’s fourth most widely spoken language.Footnote 1 In Canada, French, alongside English, is an official language, and, together with Indigenous languages, is a defining component of the country’s identity. The French language is a vehicle for learning, identity, and economic, social, cultural and scientific development, as well as civic participation. It reflects the rich diversity of the intellectual traditions that have shaped Canada’s scientific community. It helps build trust between Canadians and their government.

In 2023, the Government of Canada recognized the vulnerability of French in Canada in the modernized Official Languages Act (PDF) (the Act), where it committed to protecting and promoting the French language, recognizing that French is in a minority situation in Canada and North America due to the predominant use of English. It further affirmed that in implementing the new Act, it would be guided by the principle of substantive equality, pledging to advance the status and use of French in its activities, including in science.

The pressures on French within the research ecosystem in Canada are a clear example of this vulnerability and of the need to take action to advance substantive equality.

Substantive equality refers to equality in practice, achieved by removing contextual barriers—normative, cultural, economic, social and historical, including unconscious biases—that stand in the way of fair treatment for French speakers. Studies show that there are systemic biases against research in French within the research ecosystem in Canada, biases that have consequences for the careers of French-speaking researchers and are hastening the decline of French as a language of science. Those biases are undermining the French-language socialization of the next generation of researchers and the recruitment of international talent. They are pushing actors within the research ecosystem to treat French as a third-rate language instead of the official language that it is.

The decline of French within the research ecosystem in Canada is having a detrimental impact not only on the research community but also on Canadian society as a whole. The anglicization of research is eroding Canada’s human and institutional capacities, and undermining its distinctiveness on the world stage. This is costing Canada influence in Francophone diplomatic circles.

By relying solely on English, Canada is also losing capacity to contribute to scientific and professional vocabulary in French. For example, there are gaps to be filled in existing linguistic corpora in emerging fields of research, such as artificial intelligence. If Canada is to raise its national profile and the profile of French-speaking researchers working across the country in key sectors of the economy, both in Quebec and in minority settings, it cannot afford to neglect its own talent.

In the ongoing transformation of our economy and the country as a whole, the various actors involved in French-language research must not be sidelined. In 2024, the Government of Canada established the External Advisory Panel on the Creation and Dissemination of Scientific Information in French (the Advisory Panel). The Panel’s Terms of Reference are to provide the Minister responsible for Official Languages with recommendations informing the development of a federal strategy for securing the future of French within the research ecosystem in Canada.

In 2025, the Speech from the Throne (PDF) reiterated the importance to Canada of protecting the institutions that promote the French language. This report presents recommendations and proposes positive measures that will help the Government of Canada meet its language obligations within the research ecosystem in Canada and advance substantive equality by protecting, promoting and raising the profile of the French language in science.

Names and affiliations of Advisory Panel members (in alphabetical order by surname)

Acknowledgements

The Advisory Panel extends its deepest gratitude to the members of the Secretariat at Canadian Heritage for their first-rate support, assistance and attentiveness throughout the work culminating in this report. Thanks also go to Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada for its support and guidance.

In addition, the Advisory Panel would like to express special appreciation to all those who enthusiastically agreed to take part in its consultations and activities. Thanks also to those who reviewed this report and provided comments and suggested revisions; the quality of our work has benefited greatly from your attention to detail.

Executive summary

On October 22, 2024, the Government of Canada tasked the External Advisory Panel on the Creation and Dissemination of Scientific Information in French (the Advisory Panel) with providing recommendations informing the development of a future federal strategy for ensuring the viability of French within Canada’s scientific research ecosystem.

The Advisory Panel has prepared a report grounded in three core ideas: research in French is a matter of substantive equality; it is a driver of economic prosperity; and it is a strategic asset for Canada.

In this report, the Advisory Panel extensively documents a set of barriers—linguistic bias, financial inequity, insufficient support for training and student mobility, and the devaluing of scientific publishing in French, and proposes measures and recommendations to help the Government of Canada remove those barriers. The Report advocates an inclusive approach whereby everyone can realize their full potential in research and contribute fully to prosperity in Canada.

Support for research in French

Robust Government of Canada support for research in French offers many benefits. It strengthens the development of human capital in both official languages. It also enriches scientific corpora and professional vocabularies and supports the transmission of intellectual traditions dating back to the founding of the country. Linguistic diversity is an undeniable scientific asset. Such diversity fosters a plurality of perspectives, freedom of expression and quality of dialogue. This enables Canada to boost creativity and enhance its overall capacities.

The French-speaking scientific community, whatever the size or nature of its institutions (colleges and universities), brings together a pool of highly qualified talent that contributes directly to the knowledge economy. Investment in research in French is a key enabler of innovation and Canada’s cultural, economic, social and technological development in both official languages. These contributions help improve the well-being of Canadians and make Canada more competitive in global markets.

In the absence of a Canadian science-diplomacy strategy, research in French is a major instrument of diplomatic influence. Advances in this area are an opportunity for Canada to shine on the world stage and play a leading role in the international Francophonie. The mobilization of knowledge in French positions Canada as a global leader in discussions on the discoverability of diverse scientific content, open access and scientific multilingualism.

Our approach

The report is based on a scientific approach that draws on a combination of syntheses of existing works, statistical data, expert reports and interviews with the research community. The Advisory Panel met with more than 160 actors in the research ecosystem—from Moncton, New Brunswick, to the major research hubs in Quebec, to Edmonton, Alberta. The Advisory Panel also received some 30 briefs as part of an online consultation with the general public, research associations and learned societies. Lastly, the Panel met with a number of senior officials from federal departments and agencies with research responsibilities: some gave presentations on their efforts to support scientific research in French, while others provided written answers to our questions.

Three challenges: normative, financial and organizational

The Advisory Panel has identified three categories of challenges: normative, financial and organizational, which call for three matching commitments: strengthened research governance, new investments to support and promote research in French, and stronger leadership on the part of the Government of Canada.

The normative challenge: excellence criteria favouring English

The first challenge stems from the norms governing international scientific activity. English has ceased to be merely a language of communication; it has become the currency of prestige. The Advisory Panel notes that excellence in research is measured less by the originality of the work or its grounding in diverse contexts than by the international prestige of the journals in which it is published, and the reputation and output—measured in number of publications or citations—of post-secondary institutions. The scientific community has come to conflate research with publishing, even though publishing is only one dimension of the knowledge-production process.

Other forms of publication, such as syntheses and popularization works, textbooks, and community-based research reports, are marginalized, discouraging those who would otherwise pursue those avenues. Yet such documents play a vital role in training the next generation of French-speaking researchers, who often struggle to find instructional resources in French. The impact on their scientific socialization is enormous, as they are incentivized to internalize the dominant norms of their discipline or field of study or research, which all too often leads them to write their theses in English. As a result, the French-speaking scientific community, writ large, incurs a “hidden cost” that has as much to do with the dearth of French-language resources as with the time and effort required to write or present their work in their second official language, or translate into that language.

The financial challenge: concentrated funding and insufficient support for dissemination infrastructures

The second challenge within this prestige economy—one that undermines substantive equality—concerns the concentration of research funding. According to the data, the current federal funding model concentrates funding in the major research-intensive universities, most of which are English-language institutions. This imbalance structurally weakens knowledge production in French-language and bilingual institutions, particularly in minority settings.

The imbalance is at once geographic—drawing resources away from small and medium-sized institutions and from colleges, even though these are essential drivers of economic and social development in Francophone minority communities—and disciplinary—with certain fields essential to scientific production in French being underfunded.

In addition to a concentration of investment, the Advisory Panel has noted a lack of public engagement in knowledge-dissemination infrastructures. Scholarly journals, university presses and digital platforms, such as Érudit, are being weakened by the current open-access business model, which, in the absence of adequate public support, deprives publishers of vital revenue. More broadly, the privatization of dissemination infrastructures fuels anglicization and risks restricting access to knowledge, especially for French-speaking students, thereby undermining the fundamental principle of knowledge as a public good.

The organizational challenge: complex, fragmented governance

The third challenge is organizational in nature. The governance of French-language research in Canada is distributed among different levels of government, granting agencies, organizations and post-secondary institutions. More specifically, the Advisory Panel has observed that among federal institutions—including the granting agencies—with research responsibilities within the Government of Canada, not all are consistently aware of their obligations with respect to the substantive equality of official languages under the modernized Official Languages Act (PDF).

Initiatives to support research in French do exist within the granting agencies, but they are deployed in a decentralized manner. In the absence of an overarching strategic vision, these initiatives are struggling to achieve results that will secure the future of French within the research ecosystem.

The anticipated creation of a new umbrella research-funding organization represents an opportunity, but administrative centralization alone will not suffice. The integration of official languages across public policy calls for more robust governance grounded in collaboration and coordination among the various stakeholders.

In this regard, the Government of Quebec, through the Fonds de recherche du Québec, has funded a range of initiatives to support research in French—chief among them the creation of the Réseau francophone international en conseil scientifique, the Programme des Chaires de recherche sur le Québec and a new network of chairs in science diplomacy. The Government of Canada needs to follow suit and take the necessary positive measures to advance the status and use of French within the research ecosystem in Canada.

Three key recommendations: governance, investment and leadership

The Advisory Panel has three key recommendations corresponding to each of the challenges: strengthened governance through the establishment of a Secretariat for the Coordination of Research in French; dedicated investments through the creation of a Research in French Support and Promotion Fund; and stronger leadership on the part of the Government of Canada in terms of compliance, data transparency and accountability.

Figure 1. Three structural recommendations
Figure 1. Three structural recommendations – text version

The visual shows a Venn diagram made up of three large overlapping circles. The first circle focuses on governance and refers to a coordination secretariat centered on strategic visions, cooperation, and collaboration. The second focuses on investment and indicates funding of $40 million per year through a support fund, aimed in particular at knowledge, talent, dissemination, and promotion. The third focuses on leadership and highlights a French-language lens associated with accountability compliance, and transparency. At the centre, where the three circles overlap, is the federal strategy for the substantive equality of official languages in science.

These recommendations call for key positive measures, both horizontal and sector-specific, to advance the substantive equality of official languages and ensure an inclusive research approach throughout the knowledge production and dissemination cycle: (1) support for the next generation of French-speaking researchers, (2) support for research in French and research on the Francophonie, (3) scholarly communication, and (4) the promotion of knowledge in French.

Recommendation 1: Strengthen Canadian Research Governance

Measure 1: The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada create a Secretariat for the Coordination of Research in French (SCRF). The SCRF would be an integral part of the future umbrella research-funding organization. On an interim basis, it would be housed within Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, and its mandate would be as follows:

Measure 2: The Advisory Panel recommends that Canadian Heritage, in collaboration with provincial and territorial governments (including the Government of Quebec), establish a mechanism for pan-Canadian coordination on post-secondary education in French, one that brings together federal partners, the Association des collèges et universités de la francophonie canadienne (ACUFC), the Bureau de coopération interuniversitaire du Québec (BCI) and the post-secondary education community (colleges and universities). Its mandate would be to boost the supply of French-language programs in minority settings, with priority given to: health sciences (college); science, technology, engineering and mathematics—STEM (university); and graduate studies (humanities and social sciences).

Recommendation 2: Provide a New Dedicated Investment of $40 Million Per Year

The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada establish a Research in French Support and Promotion Fund (RFSPF). That strategic fund, worth at least $40 million per year (roughly 1% of federal research funding), would complement existing investments, acting as a catalyst for research in French.

The fund would support the rollout of the Federal Strategy to Support and Promote Research in French. It would comprise a Knowledge and Talent stream, focused on research in French and research on Francophone communities, and a Dissemination Infrastructures and Knowledge Promotion stream, which would support the full chain of knowledge dissemination, translation and mobilization.

Stream 1: Knowledge and Talent

Measure 3 (Knowledge): The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada create a program called “Francophone Missions” consisting of three equally funded components:

Measure 4 (Emerging Talent): The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada support the next generation of French-speaking researchers, specifically through four actions to be carried out by the research granting agencies and Canadian Heritage:

Stream 2: Dissemination Infrastructure and Knowledge Promotion

Measure 5 (Platform and Translation): The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada strengthen support for dissemination infrastructures and digital platforms through three actions to be carried out by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and National Research Council Canada (NRC):

Measure 6 (Scholarly Publishing): The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada enhance support for scholarly publishing through five actions to be carried out by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and PCH:

Measure 7 (Visibility): The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada provide financial support for scientific culture through four actions to be carried out by the granting agencies, Library and Archives Canada, and PCH:

Recommendation 3: Strengthen Governement of Canada Leadership

The Government of Canada needs to lead by example, demonstrating transparency and a heightened sense of accountability for the substantive equality of official languages. It needs to ensure that its scientific activities and funding mechanisms reflect the intrinsic value of research in French and eliminate the systemic biases and negative perceptions that undermine the competitiveness and international standing of such research.

Measure 8 (Compliance and Accountability): The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada strengthen federal institutions’ compliance with the Official Languages Act (PDF) (the Act) by supporting intramural French-language scientific research and publishing through three actions:

Measure 9 (Strengthened Mandates): The Advisory Panel recommends that the granting agencies and Library and Archives Canada help raise the profile of research in French through two actions:

Measure 10 (Transparency and Incentives): The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada mandate the granting agencies to create incentives to curb biases and address perceptions that undermine research in French through four actions:

Measure 11 (Evidence): The Advisory Panel recommends that Statistics Canada monitor graduation and enrolment trends in French and that the Government of Canada make the Survey on the Official Language Minority Population permanent.

Measure 12 (Science Diplomacy): The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada adopt a science-diplomacy policy in order to engage more coherently within the international Francophonie.

Executive summary Conclusion

In the various actors we consulted—who represent the lifeblood of research in French—we found a scientific community that is engaged, dynamic and ready to take on new challenges. Those actors shared an unwavering belief in the immeasurable value of French-language research and the need to protect, promote and share the outputs and knowledge generated by that research. Science and knowledge are a public good that benefits all Canadians.

However, research in French is facing deliberate, enduring structural barriers, barriers that demand a policy response commensurate with the challenges identified. Investing more in research in French is about building on a competitive edge that is unique to Canada. It is about choosing diversity over uniformity, a diversity that fuels creativity. Implementing these recommendations will enable Canada to fulfill its obligations under the Act and take its place as a modern, diverse, influential scientific power—in both official languages.

Introduction: Substantive equality at the heart of a renewed vision for research in Canada

Never before has the Government of Canada been investing as much in research and innovation across the country as it is now. On December 9, 2025, it announced a major new investment of $1.7 billion to launch the Canada Global Impact+ Research Talent Initiative, a suite of programs aimed at attracting leading international researchers to Canada.

Yet there remain concerns within the French-speaking scientific community. Funding for the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge in French does not appear to reflect what that knowledge contributes to the country’s prosperity. Since 2021, significant studies have highlighted the vulnerability of post-secondary institutions in Francophone minority settingsFootnote 2 and the barriers faced by French-speaking researchers working there, who struggle to carry out their activities in their first official language.Footnote 3 Other studies have pointed to the low number of funding proposals submitted in French,Footnote 4 the vulnerability of the knowledge-dissemination infrastructures, the decline of French in scholarly communications, and the low discoverability of French-language scientific content.Footnote 5 Still others have stressed the challenges of French-language knowledge transfer on pressing issues, such as climate change and population health.Footnote 6

How can we account for the decline of French within the research ecosystem in Canada at a time when the ecosystem as a whole has never received as much government support? This report seeks to shed light on that paradox, providing a situational overview based on existing studies and meetings with key actors in the research community.

The report adopts a comprehensive and inclusive approach. Chapter 1 lays out a four-quadrant typology of the research ecosystem in Canada: creation, training of the next generation of researchers, dissemination, and promotion. It identifies three categories of systemic challenges/barriers that account for the decline of French within that ecosystem: tacit norms that favour English; a concentration of resources among the major research-intensive institutions; and complex, fragmented research governance. Chapters 2 through 5 then explore the situation of French in relation to each quadrant and the range of existing activities seen through the lens of these three challenges/barriers.

Chapter 2 explores the situation of French in research activities internal and external to the Government of Canada. It gives particular consideration to potential systemic biases in the evaluation, by granting-agency review committees, of research proposals submitted in French. It also looks at how funding is concentrated in a minority of institutions. Lastly, it questions the extent to which the Government of Canada is leading by example in intramural research.

Chapter 3 focuses more specifically on issues related to the next generation of researchers, including the impact of systemic biases on their scientific socialization. It examines training needs and access to instructional resources. It shows that the absence of coordination mechanisms among partners and the lack of evidence-based data about what programs to offer in minority settings have made program offerings more vulnerable.

Chapter 4 looks at knowledge dissemination, examining the effects of the limited symbolic value attributed to French-language publications. It shows that the economic viability of the existing infrastructures—dominated by English-language publishing—represents a major challenge for disseminating research in French. It gives particular attention to digital challenges affecting the discoverability of scientific content in French.

Chapter 5 addresses knowledge mobilization and scientific popularization, analyzing the inadequacy of the measures to promote the outputs of research in French. It notes, among other things, that researchers interested in community-based research, especially in minority settings, work outside the prestige economy. It also highlights the fragmentation of the institutional structures in this area and the absence of a federal science-diplomacy strategy, factors that have conspired to hinder the development and implementation of measures conducive to the promotion of scientific knowledge in French.

In keeping with the modernized Official Languages Act (PDF) (the Act), the Advisory Panel has, throughout this report, applied the principle of substantive equality to its analysis of the situation of French within the research ecosystem in Canada.Footnote 7 Concerning that principle, the Act recognizes that contextual factors—normative, cultural, economic, historical and social, including unconscious bias—can hinder equitable treatment of French-speaking individuals, including in science.

For more than two decades in Canada, the concept of substantive equality has coexisted with that of formal equality. Formal equality, as the term suggests, is formal in nature: it emphasizes that everyone is equal before the law. Substantive equality, by contrast, is about de facto equality, free from differential treatment and systemic barriers. The means of achieving this can be likened to positive discrimination. In the area of official languages, Canadian jurisprudence has emphasized the need to consider the specific context and circumstances of official language minority communities when designing public services so that those services are of equal quality to those provided to the majority.Footnote 8

This report takes an innovative approach in that it applies a substantive-equality analysis to the scientific field. To this end, it relies primarily on data that address the language variable while recognizing that further research will be required to refine the findings and analyses.Footnote 9

The report shows that the prestige economy characteristic of the research environment is shaped not only by healthy competition among those involved in knowledge production but also by practices that undermine research in French. The pursuit of excellence and merit is guided by practices that reward a certain profile of researcher, one fully immersed in competitive structures, often at the expense of diverse research pathways. This erodes the preconditions for creating, producing, mobilizing and disseminating knowledge, and it raises concerns about the viability of French-language and bilingual institutions, especially in Francophone minority settings.

The Advisory Panel believes that any strategy to secure the future of research in French must address the contextual factors and practices that work against substantive equality in research. Such a strategy would help establish a new foundation for the prestige economy, one that is more inclusive and pluralistic. The strategy would be grounded in four guiding principles conducive to substantive equality:

  1. Research in French is invaluable to Canada’s international visibility and economic influence; it is a public good that the country must protect and promote.
  2. No one should be disadvantaged or discriminated against for choosing to study or conduct research in French in Canada.
  3. Canadians must be able to discover and access the results of publicly funded research in the official language of their choice.
  4. The Government of Canada needs to take positive measures to advance the status and use of French in research, particularly in Francophone minority settings.

Implementing these principles will require addressing existing factors and practices that devalue French within the research ecosystem in Canada—including research on the Francophonie itself. The various chapters present recommendations and measures for deconstructing these forces and steering the system towards substantive equality.

Chapter 1: Securing the future of French within the research ecosystem in Canada

The contribution of research in French to Canada’s talent development, capacity building, economic prosperity and international profile is undeniable. Since the modernization of the Act, the French-speaking scientific community has been expecting the Government of Canada to take positive measures to remove the barriers to its vitality and development within the research ecosystem in Canada. By addressing these challenges, the government will be helping to advance the substantive equality of official languages in science, while contributing to a broader strengthening of Canada’s research capacity, in support of the vitality and development of communities.

This chapter begins by presenting the various components—key actors, environments, governance mechanisms and resources—of the research ecosystem in Canada. It goes on to identify the contextual factors and barriers contributing to the decline of French in research, in the training of the next generation of researchers, in scholarly publishing and in knowledge promotion across Canada.

Lastly, it introduces the Advisory Panel’s three key recommendations, which lay the groundwork for a course correction within the research ecosystem in Canada. Grounded in the principle of substantive equality of official languages, these recommendations urge the Government of Canada to:

1.1 The research ecosystem in Canada

The research ecosystem is the environment in which the actors involved in research interact with one another and with the various practice communities. The ecosystem rests on four pillars: individual and institutional actors; knowledge production and dissemination venues; operating principles and governance structures; and financial and human resources. Understanding this ecosystem is essential to identifying the barriers contributing to the decline of French as a language of science.

1.1.1 The various actors

In addition to the researchers themselves, the research landscape in Canada includes governments, non-governmental organizations—colleges and universities, hospitals, community and civil-society organizations, and learned societies—and the private sector. It also includes the various actors involved in disseminating knowledge to French-speaking audiences through scholarly publishing, knowledge mobilization and scientific popularization.

For example, organizations such as Acfas, the Réseau de recherche sur la francophonie canadienne, the Bibliothèque of the Centre de la francophonie des Amériques and Savoir média play a major role in transmitting and showcasing the knowledge produced by researchers in Quebec and in Francophone communities across Canada.

At the ecosystem’s margins—overlapping with the journalistic field—are science journalists. These actors form networks and practice communities, each with its own distinct internal dynamics but constantly interacting with the others.

It is the researchers, however, who remain the primary drivers of this ecosystem. They sit on the various granting-agency committees, head up scholarly journals, chair learned societies and provide the leadership required to build regional, national and international research networks, initiate collaborative projects and cultivate partnerships with private, civil-society or government actors.

1.1.2 Production and dissemination venues

In Canada, research activities fall into two broad categories: intramural and extramural. Intramural research refers to research conducted within federal institutions that have research responsibilities. These activities mainly involve national priorities such as defence, natural resources, environmental issues and economic statistics. They provide the Government of Canada with the studies and data it needs to make informed decisions to advance its priorities.

Extramural research is any research activity carried out outside the Government of Canada, including basic, applied and community-based research. Most basic research is carried out in universities, often in laboratories or research centres.

Applied research—in the area of technology development, for example—is largely the preserve of the private sector. While that sector mostly funds its own research—and is therefore less subject to federal rules—it does receive indirect support from governments, such as tax credits. Universities involved in applied research generally collaborate in the dissemination of results through scholarly publishing, while businesses tend to favour patenting.

Applied research is also carried out in colleges. In Quebec, for example, the CEGEP system includes fifty or so innovation and applied research centres (the CCTT network) that foster technology transfer and socially innovative practices. Across Canada, colleges play a particularly important role in developing new products in partnership with local businesses and in supporting the training of the next generation.

Community-based research encompasses a large number of socially oriented applied research projects carried out by non-governmental and community-based organizations. Universities too sometimes develop expertise in this type of research as part of their public-service role, as is the case at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), which is recognized as a trailblazer in this area. In Francophone minority settings, community-based research is especially important within universities: researchers are often the first to be invited to design research projects in response to needs expressed by the community—whether in the form of needs assessments, situational analyses or studies informing action plans. While it is impossible to fully quantify all the reports and studies co-developed with the community sector, those outputs do guide the work of numerous organizations and help inform public debate on issues ranging from climate change, to immigration, to education, to mental health, to intimate-partner violence.

Dissemination venues include scholarly journals, university presses and specialized presses, digital dissemination platforms, such as Érudit, and libraries, including university libraries, as well as media outlets. The Advisory Panel distinguishes between dissemination venues intended for specialists (i.e. the scientific community)—such as the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ/JAMC)—and those intended for the general public and focused on science popularization, such as Québec science Footnote 10. Finally, it should be noted that federal science-based institutions maintain their own dissemination venues for their research; examples include Survey Methodology, a journal published by Statistics Canada, and the scientific popularization and knowledge-transfer programs and activities of the Canadian Space Agency and the Public Health Agency of Canada.

1.1.3 Research governance

Federal support for scientific research dates back to the early 20th century. In 1916, the Government of Canada created National Research Council Canada (NRC), which, from the outset, played a dual role: funding university research and conducting its own research activitiesFootnote 11. It was not until the 1970s that the main granting agencies—the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)—were established. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) was established in the year 2000 following a restructuring of the former Medical Research Council of Canada, which dated back to 1960.

Most of the institutions supporting extramural research fall within two portfolios: Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED); and Health portfolio. ISED’s portfolio supports funding of extramural research in the natural sciences and engineering through NSERC, research in the humanities and social sciences through SSHRC, and research infrastructures through the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI). The Health Portfolio supports funding of extramural health related- research primarily through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research 13 (CIHR), composed of 13 institutes.

Research governance also involves different levels of government. Canada’s federal system divides powers among the provincial, territorial and federal governments. Although post-secondary education falls under provincial/territorial jurisdiction, funding for college- and university-based research has, over time, become a responsibility shared by the two levels of government.

Lastly, colleges and universities, through their internal policies, language policies, researcher evaluation practices, hiring and promotion standards, and degree requirements (such as for doctoral programs), also participate in research governance. Colleges and universities—like governments, businesses and organizations—play a role in establishing research norms, both through the ethics guidelines they develop for their research communities and through how they make use of those guidelines across disciplines.

1.1.4 Financial resources

In Canada, how research is funded is central to research governance and the robustness of research infrastructures. Over the past 25 years, federal spending on science and technology activities has grown steadily. From the early 2000s to 2025, investments increased by 250%—from $6.7 billion to just over $17 billion. The growth in funding has accelerated since 2015 in particular.

Figure 2. Total amount of Government of Canada expenditures on science and technology, by major departments and agencies, expressed as percentages represented by SSHRC, NSERC, CIHR and the CFI

Source: Statistics Canada. Table 27-10-0026-01

Figure 2. Total amount of Government of Canada expenditures on science and technology, by major departments and agencies, expressed as percentages represented by SSHRC, NSERC, CIHR and the CFI – text version
Years Federal Total (millions of dollars) SSHRC, NSERC, CIHR, CFI (millions of dollars) Proportion SSHRC, NSERC, CIHR, CFI (%)
2000-2001 6,707 1,293 19%
2001-2002 8,169 1,718 21%
2002-2003 8,014 1,801 22%
2003-2004 8,765 2,250 26%
2004-2005 8,934 2,361 26%
2005-2006 9,448 2,683 28%
2006-2007 9,630 2,748 29%
2007-2008 10,175 3,000 29%
2008-2009 10,574 3,084 29%
2009-2010 11,613 3,137 27%
2010-2011 11,600 3,275 28%
2011-2012 10,993 3,239 29%
2012-2013 10,754 3,334 31%
2013-2014 10,670 3,184 30%
2014-2015 10,264 3,219 31%
2015-2016 10,442 3,202 31%
2016-2017 11,428 3,383 30%
2017-2018 12,054 3,485 29%
2018-2019 12,261 3,754 31%
2019-2020 12,817 3,872 30%
2020-2021 14,608 4,683 32%
2021-2022 15,000 4,184 28%
2022-2023 15,399 4,183 27%
2023-2024 16,252 4,403 27%
2024-2025 17,008 4,616 27%
2025-2026 17,014 4,645 27%

Since 2025, the granting agencies have received a significant though non-majority share of these investments, typically between 27% and 32%. Their overall budgets have followed a similar trajectory, rising from roughly $1.2 billion in 2000 to $4.6 billion in 2025.

In 2025, the three granting agencies each had a budget of between $1.3 billion and $1.4 billion, while the CFI’s budget stood at $560 million. SSHRC’s budget includes programs and services shared between the three agencies (Canada Research Chairs, and the New Frontiers in Research Fund).

Figure 3. Granting agency (SSHRC, NSERC, CIHR and CFI) budgets and these budgets as a percentage share of total Government of Canada spending on science and technology

Source: Statistics Canada. Table 27-10-0026-01

Figure 3. Granting agency (SSHRC, NSERC, CIHR and CFI) budgets and these budgets as a percentage share of total Government of Canada spending on science and technology – text version
Budgets (millions $)
Years NSERC CIHR SSHRC CFI
2000-2001 568 392 145 188
2001-2002 588 529 362 239
2002-2003 653 628 188 332
2003-2004 732 693 460 365
2004-2005 808 759 523 271
2005-2006 864 808 574 437
2006-2007 900 853 628 367
2007-2008 1,018 988 684 310
2008-2009 1,036 980 683 385
2009-2010 1,057 998 690 392
2010-2011 1,079 1,034 689 473
2011-2012 1,088 1,012 698 441
2012-2013 1,078 997 696 563
2013-2014 1,070 998 696 420
2014-2015 1,085 1,017 713 404
2015-2016 1,115 1,026 720 341
2016-2017 1,191 1,081 776 335
2017-2018 1,219 1,097 784 385
2018-2019 1,329 1,151 873 401
2019-2020 1,355 1,202 941 374
2020-2021 1,372 1,503 1,419 389
2021-2022 1,408 1,384 1,016 376
2022-2023 1,382 1,337 1,063 401
2023-2024 1,383 1,348 1,160 512
2024-2025 1,384 1,370 1,298 564
2025-2026 1,394 1,369 1,322 560
Percentage of Budgets
Years NSERC CIHR SSHRC CFI
2000-2001 8% 6% 2% 3%
2001-2002 7% 6% 4% 3%
2002-2003 8% 8% 2% 4%
2003-2004 8% 8% 5% 4%
2004-2005 9% 8% 6% 3%
2005-2006 9% 9% 6% 5%
2006-2007 9% 9% 7% 4%
2007-2008 10% 10% 7% 3%
2008-2009 10% 9% 6% 4%
2009-2010 9% 9% 6% 3%
2010-2011 9% 9% 6% 4%
2011-2012 10% 9% 6% 4%
2012-2013 10% 9% 6% 5%
2013-2014 10% 9% 7% 4%
2014-2015 11% 10% 7% 4%
2015-2016 11% 10% 7% 3%
2016-2017 10% 9% 7% 3%
2017-2018 10% 9% 7% 3%
2018-2019 11% 9% 7% 3%
2019-2020 11% 9% 10% 3%
2020-2021 9% 10% 7% 3%
2021-2022 9% 9% 7% 3%
2022-2023 9% 9% 7% 3%
2023-2024 9% 8% 8% 3%
2024-2025 8% 8% 8% 3%
2025-2026 8% 8% 8% 3%

Internal data from the granting agencies provide a more nuanced picture of investment distribution. For example, in 2025, SSHRC’s actual expenditures totalled $768 million—including shared programs such as the New Frontiers in Research Fund and the Canada Biomedical Research Fund—while NSERC and CIHR expenditures each approached $1.4 billion.

Overall, nearly half of federal investments in research—$4.3 billion of $8.9 billion—flow to universities, making them the primary beneficiaries of federal research funding. The second-largest beneficiary is the Government of Canada itself, which funds its own intramural research through the NRC, federal departments and other institutions that are active in research—such as Mitacs, Genome Canada and CIFAR—for a total of $2.7 billion. Support to commercial enterprises represents nearly $1.8 billion.

In addition to federal investments, nearly $55 billion was invested in research and development in Canada in 2024. Almost half of this amount comes from businesses that directly fund their own research.

In post-secondary institutions—where most basic research is carried out—research is funded by a variety of organizations, not only the Government of Canada. Contributors include the institutions themselves, the provincial and territorial governments, and private and not-for-profit organizations. Provinces and territories directly fund less than 8% of total university-based research in Canada, contributing just over $1.4 billion.Footnote 12

In short, the research ecosystem in Canada is a complex system of actors, institutions, governance mechanisms and investments, within which researchers transform inputs (resources, projects, activities) into symbolic goods (articles, patents, scholarly communications). Once validated through certification processes (peer review), these outputs form part of the scientific knowledge base and are disseminated to the public through a range of channels (radio, television, print media and social media).

To date, this ecosystem has enabled major discoveries and significant technical and social innovations that continue to benefit Canadians, from expertise in mediation and research on gender-based violence to the development of fall-bearing strawberries and face shields for frontline medical staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. These achievements have been made possible by the sustained engagement of ecosystem stakeholders and by substantial public investments that have grown steadily over the years.

Yet these successes and investments must not blind us to the power dynamics, competition for funding and rivalry for international rankings that shape Canada’s research landscape. Over time, hierarchies have emerged, often without regard for the specific realities of different settings. It is no coincidence, then, that for the past 20 years, various studies—beginning with those of the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages, in 2008, and of Acfas, in 2021—have documented the barriers to the vitality of French within the research ecosystem and its growing vulnerability, to the point where many now readily speak of a decline in that language. For the sake of clarity, before presenting the main findings with respect to this decline, we begin by defining “research in French” and “scientific knowledge in French.”

1.2 French within the research ecosystem in Canada: a multifaceted, poorly understood reality

During the consultations, the Advisory Panel was asked to explain what it meant by “research in French.” Did the term refer to the language used in laboratories? Or in articles? Or the language of daily interactions among researchers and students? Or did it refer instead to the subject matter of the research—i.e. issues or challenges involving Francophone contexts? Did it refer to the challenges faced by French-speaking researchers in minority settings, such as the shortage of research assistants or of research-support services in French? Or did it refer more fundamentally to the designing and developing of research projects in French, with all that the French language brings to bear in terms of conceptual frameworks and worldviews? Did research in French include scholarly publishing and the dissemination of knowledge in French?

To avoid conceptual ambiguity and the pitfalls of overly broad common sense–based or politically overcharged categories, the Advisory Panel agreed on definitions and a four-quadrant typology to guide its investigation. Depending on the quadrant, “decline,” “marginalization,” “vulnerability” and “barrier to substantive equality” refer to distinct realities, realities that the Panel sought to delineate clearly.

1.2.1 Research and scientific knowledge in French

Throughout its consultations, the Advisory Panel observed that the scientific community has come to conflate research with publishing, even though publishing is only one dimension of the knowledge-production process. Scientific research encompasses a broad range of activities: collecting and analyzing data; reviewing the work of peers; presenting research results through articles, books or, in some cases, patents; participating in conferences and symposia; preparing funding applications; and supervising graduate students. Such supervision is part of the disciplinary socialization of the next generation of researchers. It supports their acquisition of methodologies appropriate to their field of study and introduces them to a set of core issues, theories and concepts associated with classic and contemporary authors. Such socialization takes place in graduate seminars, in laboratories, in conferences, during the preparation and writing of theses, and when students join a research team and learn the basics of the profession through practice.

For the Advisory Panel, “research in French” therefore has several meanings. First, it means that French-speaking researchers conduct part—though not necessarily all—of their activities in French. For example, they will use French in their teaching or within their research teams, but when it comes time to submit a grant application, research-ethics file or an article to a journal, English may become the primary language of communication. Understood in this way, research in French means working in French while taking into account individual choices and the constraints associated with carrying out and disseminating work within the research ecosystem.

Second, research in French also covers research activities that have Francophone issues as their subject matter. Such activities are closely tied to the production of knowledge that is useful and relevant to local or regional communities, including in minority settings. Such knowledge contributes to public debate; to local, regional and national economies; to civic participation; and to public services. Research on Francophone issues plays an essential role in shedding light on issues specific to minority settings and to Quebec. The colleges and universities of the Canadian Francophonie are community-based institutions defined by their identity-driven mission and their contribution to the socio-economic development of their communities. Like the Université du Québec system, whose mandate is to support regional development, they have responsibilities to their communities.

Third, “research in French” refers to the training, in French, of the next generation of researchers at the pivotal stage of disciplinary socialization, during which they integrate the relevant technical or specialized French vocabulary.

By “scientific knowledge,” the Advisory Panel means knowledge produced according to the methods and protocols accepted across scientific disciplines and generated in a variety of venues: post-secondary, government, private sector or civil society. Scientific knowledge in French comprises all knowledge that is taught and disseminated in French once validated by the appropriate certification bodies (i.e. once peer-reviewed). It is intended for the Canadian and international scientific community, for decision-makers and for the general public.

The state of scientific knowledge in French depends on the discipline. In the natural sciences and engineering—where research topics are highly internationalized—French is practically absent from scientific communications. At the other end of the spectrum, in the humanities and social sciences, French retains a meaningful presence in scholarly communications, though it is under threat. Between these two extremes lies medicine: although some research addresses phenomena of global relevance, the considerable variation in the prevalence of disease and organization of health services across countries, regions and populations leaves space for publication in languages other than English.

The line between research and scientific knowledge is a fine one. Research includes scholarly communication activities, such as writing scientific articles and participating in conferences and symposia. But once an article is published or conference proceedings are prepared, these communications enter the common pool of knowledge, to be reviewed by peers or popularized and made available to the wider public.

1.2.2 French within the research ecosystem in Canada: Between vulnerability and decline

Over the past 25 years, numerous studies have documented the marginalization, vulnerability or decline of French within the research ecosystem. The Advisory Panel has adopted a four-quadrant typology to guide its investigation, delve deeper into the findings of existing work, and identify and analyze the various barriers to the advancement of French within the research ecosystem in Canada.

Figure 4. Four-quadrant typology for studying the situation of French within the research ecosystem in Canada
Figure 4. Four-quadrant typology for studying the situation of French within the research ecosystem in Canada – text version

The visual presents a four-part diagram organized around a central theme. At the centre is the title “French in the research ecosystem: between fragility and decline.” Surrounding this core are four thematic blocks arranged in a cross-shaped layout.

On the left, the first block focuses on research in French and refers to the challenges faced by French-speaking researchers in extramural settings, the evaluation of grant applications submitted in French, the challenges faced by French-speaking researchers in intramural settings and research on Francophone topics. Below it, a second block focuses on French-language training for the next generation of researchers and addresses training programs, educational materials, support for French-speaking emerging researchers, and the language of theses and dissertations.

On the right, the third block focuses on scholarly communications in French and includes scholarly journals, scholarly books, and digital dissemination platforms. Below it, the fourth block focuses on the promotion of scientific knowledge in French and addresses knowledge mobilization, science communication, as well as scientific diplomacy and the promotion of knowledge around the world.

Quadrant 1: Research in French

To date, studies examining the first quadrant have highlighted the barriers faced by the French-speaking scientific community.Footnote 13 For example, in 2021, Acfas’s report Portrait et défis de la recherche en français en contexte minoritaire au Canada identified several barriers to conducting research on the Francophonie or on Francophone minority communities, including real or perceived biases about the legitimacy of this field, particularly in the evaluation of funding applications submitted to the granting agencies.

The Acfas study, like those of the various parliamentary committees, showed that the difficulties experienced by researchers in minority settings stem from weak research infrastructure, limited institutional support for preparing grant applications in French, and a shortage of research assistants. The small size of French-language or bilingual institutions in minority settings also contributes to increased isolation for researchers, who enjoy few opportunities to join international collaborations or research teams.Footnote 14

As noted in the report of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research, Revitalizing Research and Scientific Publication in French in Canada, the proportion of applications to the granting agencies (SSHRC, NSERC, CIHR) submitted in French is lower than the demographic weight of French-speaking researchers in Canada. In addition, many researchers believe they are less likely to receive funding if they submit their applications in French, in part because of the presumed gaps in French-language proficiency on the part of the review committee members.Footnote 15

In 2023, Acfas took action to address these barriers, creating the Service d’aide à la recherche en français (SARF), a support service for French-language research outside Quebec. SARF has received financial support from the governments of Quebec and Canada, as well as private-sector partners.Footnote 16 This is a step in the right direction, but meaningful change within the research ecosystem cannot rest on the efforts of a single civil-society organization, however important that organization may be. Bringing about the deep and lasting transformation needed to advance substantive equality in research is, of course, a shared responsibility but one that falls first to the Government of Canada. The Government of Canada must also give special attention to research conducted within its own institutions. As far back as 1981, the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages was calling on the government to adopt a policy promoting intramural research in French:

We have remarked upon the absence of a coordinated and forceful position in this matter for several years now, and we are still awaiting an official federal policy on scientific, technical and specialized publications. [...] Recent international attention on the role of French as a language of science tends to point out the absence of a federal position on this issue. It is time for a coordinated and realistic federal policy directed toward the fullest possible use of one of Canada’s official languages as a language of work and publication in scientific and technical areas (emphasis added by the Advisory Panel).

Commissioner of Official Languages
Annual Report (1981), p. 81.

Chapter 2 of this report will take a closer look at these issues in light of the most recent data provided by federal institutions.

Quadrant 2: Training, in French, of the next generation of researchers

The studies reviewed by the Advisory Panel identify a number of barriers affecting the training of the next generation of French-speaking researchers. The first challenge involves the predominance of English-language documentation and instructional materials. This situation is conducive to disciplinary socialization in English: students acquire their conceptual foundations in English, which then makes scientific writing in French more difficult.

According to the study Les défis de former une relève scientifique d’expression française by the Conseil supérieur de la langue française, the humanities and the arts/literature/languages rely more heavily on French-language instructional materials, partly because their subject matter is more local and because certain formats (books/chapters) fare better in French. However, the study notes that a significant share of documentation in many disciplines is in English and that major differences exist between those disciplines. As an example, psychology and economics are becoming more like the natural sciences and engineering, where English is the norm.Footnote 17 As a result, weaker training in French undermines mastery of French scientific vocabulary and leads to the early devaluing of French-language scholarly production, steering students towards publishing in predominantly English-language international journals.

In Francophone minority settings, students face additional barriers, including heightened isolation due to the absence of collaborative networks and the critical mass needed for scientific socialization in French. Their financial needs are relatively greater, while the availability of graduate-level programs—particularly in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programs and in graduate studies—is more limited. Faculty, for their part, face heavier teaching or administrative workloads because their institutions are smaller. As a result, in some disciplines, students struggle to find supervisors that are in a position to supervise them in French and, as a result, often choose to pursue their studies in English.Footnote 18

The anglicization of training and the pressure to publish in English are also reflected in the growing number of French-speaking students who choose to write some or all of their theses in English. While 82% of master’s and doctoral theses submitted at Quebec universities were written in French in 2000, that proportion had fallen to 50% by 2022.Footnote 19 Chapter 3 of the report examines these issues in more detail, drawing on new data and on input gathered in the course of the Advisory Panel’s consultations.

Quadrant 3: Scholarly communications in French

Studies and reports on the use of French in scholarly communications show a decline, whether measured by the share of scientific articles published in French or by the number of French-language journals and their relative share of the journal landscape. Although this decline is particularly pronounced in the natural sciences and engineering—where most scientific communication now occurs in English—it is also visible in the humanities and social sciences, where it threatens the long-term survival of certain areas of research that are strongly rooted in local contexts.

In addition, French-language scholarly publishing is facing a crisis driven by technological and economic shifts. Canadian French-language scholarly journals have small budgets, relying heavily on volunteer labour and precarious funding often provided by their host universities rather than exclusively by granting agencies. In Quebec, of the roughly 117 scholarly journals that publish mainly in French, nearly 40% receive no government funding at all.Footnote 20

The shift to open access, though aligned with the goal of democratizing access to content, is destabilizing the traditional business model without fully providing for new mechanisms of financial compensation. In addition, the digital transformation comes with complex technological requirements—tagging, metadata, indexing—for ensuring the discoverability of French-language content in a global ecosystem dominated by English.

Scholarly books—especially crucial in the humanities and social sciences—are receiving insufficient support despite the Aid to Scholarly Publications Program: translation timelines are getting longer, production costs are rising, and available funding does not adequately meet the needs of enhanced digital publishing. The growing difficulty of recruiting qualified peer reviewers on a voluntary basis is slowing the publication cycle. This vulnerability within the publishing sector is threatening the validation and circulation of knowledge in French, creating a bottleneck that limits the visibility and impact of the research being produced. Chapter 4 discusses these issues in greater detail.

Quadrant 4: Promotion of scientific knowledge in French

Some studies have shown that the dialogue between science and society in French is suffering from a lack of recognition and institutional support.Footnote 21 Scientific popularization continues to be viewed as a peripheral activity, one that receives little recognition in academic evaluations or promotion decisions. Time spent communicating with the general public is given less weight than scientific publication, discouraging researchers from engaging with the public.

The absence or weakness of dedicated, stable funding programs has forced many initiatives to rely on individual goodwill without adequate operating budgets. The situation is compounded by a relative skills gap: scientific popularization requires specific communication abilities in terms of synthesis, plain language and storytelling that are not systematically taught in doctoral programs. Researchers struggle to tailor their message to lay audiences, whether policy-makers, youth or the general public. In today’s digital environment, scientific content in French needs to compete with a vast volume of unverified information. The challenge is to make science not only accessible but compelling and visible, in order to counter disinformation effectively and cultivate a civic scientific culture in French as the foundation for an informed and critically engaged society. Chapter 5 discusses these issues in greater detail.

In short, the research ecosystem in Canada is a complex network of actors, environments and resources whose vitality depends on substantial public investment and shared governance across different sectors. The vulnerability of French is evident in the training of the next generation of researchers, where English-language documentation predominates; in scientific production, which is marked by chronic underfunding and perceived linguistic bias in the evaluation of funding applications; in scholarly publishing, which faces a structural crisis exacerbated by the digital transition; and in scientific popularization, which is underappreciated and lacking in institutional support.

Across all four quadrants, the situational overview shows that the decline or vulnerability of French within the research ecosystem in Canada can be traced to three broad categories of systemic challenges—normative, financial and organizational—that work against substantive equality.

1.3 Three challenges or barriers to securing the future of French within the research ecosystem in Canada

The first challenge involves the norms governing scientific activity. For example, publication in international journals—most of which are in English—has become a marker of excellence and the primary means for researchers to secure the academic recognition needed for career advancement and securing access to institutional resources and positions.

The second challenge is financial. It relates to the concentration of federal resources in large, research-intensive universities, most of them English-language institutions. This situation creates inequities that weaken French within the research ecosystem. For post-secondary institutions in Francophone minority settings, this lack of funding has become an existential issue.

The third challenge relates to governance. The absence of dedicated structures and the fragmentation of institutional mandates are hindering the coherent implementation of measures to support research in French. Extramural research in French requires assistance to overcome the barriers to its full development. For its part, intramural research in French remains the exception rather than the norm. The Government of Canada also needs to ensure that its researchers can work and advance in the official language of their choice.

1.3.1 The normative challenge: excellence criteria favouring English

The circulation of symbolic capital in science shapes research and publishing practices in Canada’s scientific community in ways that have specific impacts on French-speaking researchers. One of the principal criteria for recognition in the research ecosystem is scholarly publishing. Over the past 30 years, scholarly publications have come to serve not only as a means of disseminating research results but also as the basis for evaluating researchers (through the compilation of bibliometric data).

Because they rely on publication and citation counts, these metrics contain many well-documented biases, one of which is a major determinant of the language of publication used in the scientific community: the limited coverage of the literature in French (and other languages other than English), which strongly encourages researchers to publish in English in order to be discoverable and captured in the metrics.Footnote 22

Among these bibliometric indicators, the best known—and the one that contributes most to the invisibility of research in French—is impact factor. Created in the mid-1970s to measure journal usage—and, in so doing, help university librarians make subscription decisions—impact factor evolved through the 1990s into an indicator of the “quality” of articles and, by extension, of the researchers themselves.Footnote 23

Yet impact factor is not a meaningful measure of article quality—let alone researcher quality; it measures only the overall impact of an entire journal. Moreover, although more than 100,000 peer-reviewed scholarly journals exist across all fields (according to Ulrichsweb), only about 22,000 have an impact factor, as calculated by Clarivate Analytics.Footnote 24 It also bears mentioning that in 2024, of the journals with an impact factor, fewer than 250 published 10 or more articles in French, and only 781 published one or more articles in French. This illustrates the extent to which the use of the impact factor as a proxy for research quality contributes to the marginalization of French within the research ecosystem.

Lastly, it should be noted that Journal Impact Factor captures only article-type publications; it does not account for the wide range of scientific contributions made by researchers, including those highly active in community-based research, particularly in Francophone minority settings.

Despite these limitations and linguistic biases, impact factor remains central to university evaluation policies worldwide. According to an international study published in Nature on regional and institutional trends in tenure-and-promotion policies across universities and government agencies in 121 countries, research output appears in 97% of all policies, and publication metrics in more than 60%.Footnote 25 The emphasis on indexed journals—which subordinates national journals, often unindexed, to English-language international journals, which are indexed—appears in 42.7% of policies.

Canadian and American universities are no exception: a review of the criteria across a sample of so-called research-intensive universities found that 40% referred to impact factor and that, in most cases (87%), that metric was viewed positively.Footnote 26 Moreover, the numerous reports and studies reviewed by the Advisory Panel reveal that, in Canada, most researchers believe that their recognition hinges on bibliometrics. What is more, this metric is also seen as biased in favour of English, as publications in that language are more highly valued and easier to find than those in any other.

French-speaking researchers may have any number of reasons for choosing to publish in English. The Panel is not questioning these choices but does recognize that some researchers feel compelled to publish in English in order to advance in their profession.

Once that constraint has been removed—and they have achieved promotion, especially to full professor—some feel freer to publish and disseminate their research in French, whereas others continue to work primarily in English.

The anglicization observed in scholarly publishing contributes to a homogenization of approaches and viewpoints and steers research towards those topics that are valued within the anglodominant intellectual sphere. By anglodominant, we mean a system that privileges English over other languages. Such a system can also give rise to anglonormativity, that is, induce behaviours and biases that disadvantage individuals who do not align with the dominant linguistic norm. French-speaking researchers who choose to engage or work in their own language, including in research, may be judged more harshly because of their linguistic identity.Footnote 27

[Translation] I wrote my thesis in French, but my thesis articles were also published in English. Then, when I started my career, it was clear within my department that if I wanted a promotion, I couldn't necessarily publish much in French [...] Early in my career, I published almost exclusively in English, but once I felt “free” of that pressure, I began publishing more in French. Now I do a bit of both (interview conducted on June 6, 2025).

Among the issues and factors raised during the consultations was systemic linguistic bias. Systemic biases are shortcuts—patterns of judgment and prejudice directed at an individual or group because of its characteristics, which may include language. Such biases often rest more on perceptions than reality, yet they are so deeply embedded in interpersonal dynamics that they take on a life of their own.

Among the most persistent biases against French—and one that the Advisory Panel heard repeatedly, particularly from individuals working in minority settings—was that their work is often viewed as lower-quality research because it is seen as too rooted in local issues or based on small samples. Researchers with atypical profiles, or those who build reputations by working with practice communities in Francophone minority settings, are well aware that their research may be considered more marginal by their colleagues. Given that their work supports community sectors through applied research, it is often ranked lower within the academic hierarchy—a tendency that can seem puzzling. A number of participants noted that they themselves did not see the difference between basic and applied research, yet the distinction is firmly embedded in research environments.

[Translation] When I want to do my research on the vitality of French in Western Canada, I run up against questions from my colleagues about the legitimacy of doing that sort of work. [...] “That’s too community-based; it’s not serious enough,” and so on. In recent years in particular, I’ve increasingly turned to publications, to make my research more accessible, while scaling back conferences and popularization activities (interview conducted on March 3, 2025)

In addition, these biases can also lead French-speaking researchers to make defensive choices. Many of the people we heard from said that they no longer submit funding applications in French, believing that doing so hurts their chances of success. The granting agencies have put mechanisms in place allowing for the evaluation of funding applications in both official languages, yet they still face the challenge of identifying positive measures to encourage French-language applications from French-speaking researchers.

Awards

Awards and distinctions should not be overlooked, as they can facilitate promotions, raise the visibility of award-winning research by attracting media attention, inspire the next generation of researchers and help build public awareness. To better understand the linguistic issues associated with awards, the Advisory Panel compiled a list of 76 awards presented in 2024 to researchers in Canada by six organizations: Acfas, the Royal Society of Canada (RSC), SSHRC, NSERC, CIHR and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Highlights

  • A deceptively representative balance: Of the 76 awards analyzed, 23 went to researchers at French-language or bilingual institutions (30%), compared with 53 to researchers at English-language institutions. However, this representative balance relies heavily on the Acfas awards; without those awards, the Francophone presence on this list drops drastically.
  • Low federal share: The imbalance is particularly pronounced when it comes to the federal granting agencies. For example, nearly all the NSERC and CIHR awards went to researchers at English-language institutions.
  • Hegemony of the U15: Canada’s 15 major research-intensive universities (U15) capture 68% of awards, with the University of Toronto alone taking nearly 25%. The U15 have the administrative resources to support nominations—a structural advantage that works against smaller institutions and researchers in minority settings.
  • Emerging trend: To counter the bias of so-called “bilingual” awards, which often recognize work published in English, a number of associations now create awards dedicated specifically to research in French in order to promote the visibility of that research.

Where an award was not conferred in 2024, we used the most recent year in which it was conferred.

1.3.2 The financial challenge: concentration of resources and financial inequities

The second major barrier is financial, a barrier that does not necessarily stem from a desire to exclude but rather from the mechanics of federal funding programs, which tend to diminish the diversity of the research ecosystem in favour of a minority of institutions.

This dynamic, first identified by sociologist Robert K. Merton in 1968, is termed the “Matthew effect.”Footnote 28 In practice, the prestige economy described earlier acts as the barometer for allocating resources. Because excellence criteria favour publications in high-impact (largely English-language) journals, researchers and institutions that excel in this arena receive the lion’s share of grants. These additional funds then enable them to recruit more, publish more and secure even more funding. Conversely, research in French—poorly captured by these performance indicators—finds itself without the resources needed for its development.

The data examined by the Advisory Panel confirm that this model leads to a hyper-concentration of federal funding in a handful of large research-intensive universities (the U15), which are predominantly English-language institutions. This imbalance has led to a structural weakening of small and medium-sized institutions, even though they form the backbone of French-language research in Canada, especially in minority settings.

Figure 5. Share of federal research funding received by the U15 relative to their share of total faculty and students (%)Footnote 29

Source: Direction de la recherche institutionnelle, Université du Québec.

Figure 5. Share of federal research funding received by the U15 relative to their share of total faculty and students (%) – text version
Year Share of Research Funding Share of Faculty Share of Graduate Student Population
2017 80.4% 52.4% 59.3%
2018 79.8% 52.1% 59.3%
2019 78.5% 52.0% 59.1%
2020 77.8% 51.9% 58.8%
2021 78.8% 51.6% 59.0%

The funding for research reveals inequities by official language among post-secondary institutions across the country, including in the awarding of student scholarships. Each granting agency awards a higher share of funding to English-language universities than would be expected given the proportion of Canadians whose main official language spoken at home is English (75.5%).Footnote 30 For example, English-language universities receive around 80% of the grants and approximately 85% of the scholarships awarded by CIHR. The trend is the same for NSERC. In the case of SSHRC, the gap has been much narrower, especially over the past decade.

Post-secondary institutions in Francophone minority settings receive a very small share of overall funding (less than 0.1% for CIHR, less than 0.3% for NSERC and less than 0.9% for SSHRC). While they receive a higher share of scholarships than grants from CIHR, the situation is reversed at SSHRC, where the share of grants is nearly three times higher than that of scholarships.Footnote 31

[Translation] As you know, scholarships awarded by the major granting agencies are allocated in proportion to the funding received by institutions over the past three years. As a result, some institutions—particularly smaller ones—can have very few if any scholarships […]. This quota-based policy means that a student of comparable merit has comparatively lower odds of obtaining a scholarship if they are studying in Moncton than in Toronto. One might argue that students in Toronto are better performers, but I’m not convinced […]. It would take a program to correct this: a dedicated scholarship program for students working in minority settings (interview conducted on October 6, 2025).

Even setting aside questions of equity, the concentration of research funding represents a poor investment strategy. Whether measured by the number of articles produced or their scientific impact, concentrating financial resources in the hands of a researcher elite yields diminishing returns.Footnote 32

[Translation] We can have general positions on the research ecosystem in Canada, but I think that, in each case, we need to bring a linguistic lens to bear and consider the impact of a proposal on Francophone communities. [...] The Official Languages Act now includes a duty to assess the potential negative impacts of proposed measures in the public administration. […] If we fail to take action to ensure equitable distribution of funding by tackling unfair research evaluation criteria and funding bias in favour of large institutions that are able to support major research infrastructure, then we are not ensuring that Francophone institutions—both in Quebec and outside Quebec—can benefit from that funding (interview conducted on May 26, 2025).

1.3.3 The organizational challenge: research governance marked by fragmentation and the absence of dedicated structures

The Report of the Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System (Bouchard Report) showed that the research ecosystem in Canada was suffering from fragmentation that undermined its capacity for action. The multiplicity of granting agencies and the absence of unified governance mechanisms create operational “silos,” making the implementation of coordinated pan-Canadian initiatives complex, if not ineffective.

Such fragmentation—though useful for managing disciplinary portfolios—becomes a major barrier to implementing horizontal strategies: without a central body with an overarching vision, priorities that extend beyond the mandate of any single granting agency—such as support for research in French—risk running up against disparate, piecemeal approaches, which dilutes the impact of public policy.

Moreover, unlike other departments—most notably Health Canada—the federal science and research portfolio lacks dedicated structures to coordinate the implementation of positive measures in support of French.

To meet these challenges, the agencies favour a flexible form of coordination through the Canada Research Coordinating Committee. Mandate letters issued by the Government of Canada have helped drive a number of departments to give more attention to issues such as equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in science. However, while effective, this approach is vulnerable to shifting government priorities. Official languages policy should not be left to the discretion of governments. The Government of Canada must not shirk its responsibilities with respect to substantive equality in research.

[Translation] [The strategy] should be located as close as possible to the decision points for the issues it addresses; I would place it within the federal institutions responsible for research. [...]My concern is that, if it were to remain at Canadian Heritage, we would keep hearing the same argument..., that it is up to Canadian Heritage to deal with issues relating to the promotion of French and that this is not the responsibility of the granting agencies. [...] I would also steer us towards a program to support science diplomacy or scientific mobility within the Francophonie. [...] I believe that the Government of Canada...should make provision for science-diplomacy programs in French. [...] And in general, that the Government of Canada should explicitly recognize the role it needs to play in supporting post-secondary institutions outside Quebec. [...] The division of powers must not become an excuse for inaction (interview conducted on May 26, 2025).

1.4 Advancing Canadian support for French in the research ecosystem: an imperative at the heart of a global movement

The growing anglicization of the research ecosystem is an impediment to the substantive equality envisaged in the Act. To reverse this trend, federal measures must be shaped, funded and guided by a strategic vision. Governance and funding mechanisms are needed to secure the future of French within the research ecosystem. Quebec, through the transformative initiatives of its Chief Scientist, is already charting a path towards productive inter-institutional collaboration. It is now up to the Government of Canada to get on board and secure the vitality of our scientific heritage.

1.4.1 A global movement towards multilingualism in science

The Canadian context is shaped by national imperatives stemming from the requirements of the Act and from the presence of a critical mass of French-speaking researchers, many of whom are advocating for greater visibility of French within the research ecosystem. Their efforts echo the international struggle of the past 50 years for multilingualism in research, including calls for a far-reaching reform of research-evaluation processes and the diversification of knowledge-dissemination channels. This struggle is shared by national languages in general and can be observed across the world—from France, to Belgium, to Scandinavia, to China.

By contrast, the anglicization of research activities takes on a particular significance in Canada because, in most other countries—especially those where English is not an official language—that phenomenon does not necessarily alter the existing linguistic balance. In Canada, the prevailing power imbalance between French and English within the research ecosystem serves to marginalize the contribution of French-speaking researchers to the advancement of knowledge. That imbalance works against the Act’s purpose of advancing the equality of status and use of French in order to achieve substantive equality with English.

[Translation] We’ve heard it often: 'I’m going to publish in French rather than in a top-tier journal. I know it hurts my career, but I’m going to do it anyway.' It’s becoming a political choice (…) It is unacceptable, in a bilingual country, that the act of scientific publishing—disciplinary norms notwithstanding—should be a political act; it should not be this way (interview conducted on May 30, 2025).

The most widely known initiative for transforming the global research environment is, unquestionably, the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), adopted in 2012 by a group of medical-journal editors.Footnote 33 DORA’s main objective is to reduce the research community’s excessive reliance on quantitative indicators, such as Journal Impact Factor, which often skews the recognition of scholarly work and, in the case at hand, favours dissemination in English.

In 2019, the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (TSV), together with several European partners, issued a “wake-up call for policy-makers, leaders, universities, research institutions, research funders, libraries, and researchers to promote multilingualism in scholarly communication.”Footnote 34 The Helsinki Initiative notes the dominance of English in research dissemination and emphasizes the importance of multilingualism for preserving locally significant research topics. It urges the scientific community to support national infrastructures that facilitate the dissemination of knowledge in languages other than English.

Lastly, the 2023 Barcelona Declaration on Open Research InformationFootnote 35 places openness and accessibility of data at the centre of research assessment.Footnote 36 The Declaration calls for all research-related data, publications and metadata to be made available to individuals in order to foster smoother circulation of knowledge and a fairer assessment of researchers’ output. The declaration underscores the need to establish common standards for managing and sharing scientific information to ensure openness, interoperability and interconnection between databases and information systems.

[Translation] What is most urgent, in my view, is leveraging opportunities arising from the broad global shift towards open science, diamond open access, advances in generative artificial intelligence and collaboration (interview conducted on May 28, 2025).

These three international initiatives share a coherent vision: research and knowledge dissemination should be more open, responsible, inclusive and conducive to multilingualism. Together, they challenge current research-evaluation criteria and propose a rethinking of those criteria so that they serve the public good.

1.4.2 Advancing Canadian support for research in French: Governance, investment and leadership

There is genuine momentum in favour of research in French within the French-speaking scientific community. In 2023, Action Plan for Official Languages 2023–2028 announced an $8.5 million investment in support of research in French. While such funding does not, in itself, provide a framework for research in French, it does support initiatives that lay the groundwork for the development of the broader Government of Canada strategy for research in French.

In 2023, the Standing Committee on Science and Research tabled a report entitled Revitalizing Research and Scientific Publication in French in Canada in the House of Commons. The report sets out a series of recommendations for the Government of Canada, including greater promotion of research in French within the granting agencies, sustained funding for research on Canada’s Francophone communities, and support for scientific publishing in French.Footnote 37

Lastly, in 2024, the report of the Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System recommended that the Government of Canada give special attention to the empowerment of Indigenous and Francophone researchers, as well as those in other underrepresented groups, in order to foster an inclusive and diversified research environment.Footnote 38

The Advisory Panel believes that the decline of research in French is unlikely to be halted unless the Government of Canada demonstrates a firm political commitment to putting in place the tools required for sustained, well-funded action grounded in the principle of substantive equality. The Panel is therefore making three key recommendations to achieve this objective. Each recommendation will need to be implemented by way of the positive measures described in detail in the chapters that follow.

Recommendation 1: Strengthen Government of Canada Research Governance

The Advisory Panel recommends two measures essential to strengthening federal research governance in Canada. First, the Government of Canada should create a Secretariat for the Coordination of Research in French (SCRF). This foundational initiative would be an integral part of the future umbrella research-funding organization. The SCRF would be housed, on an interim basis, within Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada. Its mandate would be as follows:

To support the training of the next generation of French-speaking researchers, strengthened governance among the various partners in the post-secondary sector is also needed. The fragmentation of jurisdiction and prerogatives among the various levels of government and organizations must not be used as an excuse for inaction. Now more than ever, Canada needs to remove barriers and foster cooperation among Canadians across the country.

Second, PCH, in collaboration with the provincial and territorial governments, should establish a pan-Canadian coordination mechanism on post-secondary education in French, bringing together federal partners and post-secondary education institutions (colleges and universities). Its mandate would be to boost the supply of French-language programs in minority settings, with priority given to: health sciences (college); STEM (university); and graduate studies (humanities and social sciences).

Recommendation 2: Provide A New Dedicated, Strategic Investment of $40 Millions Per Year

The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada establish a Research in French Support and Promotion Fund (RFSPF). This strategic fund, worth at least $40 million per year (roughly 1% of federal research funding), would complement existing investments, acting as a catalyst for research in French.

The fund would support the rollout of the Federal Strategy to Support and Promote Research in French and would take the form of two streams and four components, each corresponding to one of the quadrants identified by the Advisory Panel: research in French; training, in French, of the next generation of researchers; scholarly communications in French; and promotion of scientific knowledge in French.

The first stream, Knowledge and Talent, would focus on research in French and on Francophone communities. Discussed in Chapter 2, the Knowledge component would consist of three “Francophone missions” worth $10 million per year each. The Talent component, discussed in Chapter 3, would support the training of the next generation of French-speaking researchers through scholarships, support for student mobility, support for minority-language education and funding for French-language instructional materials and resources.

The second stream, Dissemination Infrastructure and Knowledge Promotion, would support the full chain of knowledge dissemination, translation and mobilization. The first component of this stream, Scholarly Publishing, calls for Canada to develop national infrastructures for disseminating knowledge in French; this component will be examined in greater detail in Chapter 4. The second component, Visibility, would contribute to knowledge mobilization and transfer, scientific popularization and the visibility of scientific knowledge in French around the world. This component is addressed in Chapter 5, which discusses the social utility of knowledge and its importance to building a democratic and prosperous knowledge-based society.

Recommendation 3: Strengthen Government of Canada Leadership

The Government of Canada needs to lead by example, demonstrating transparency and a heightened sense of accountability. It needs to ensure that its intramural research activities and extramural research funding and support mechanisms recognize the intrinsic value of research in French and eliminate the systemic biases that undermine the competitiveness of such research. The various chapters present positive measures to enhance federal institutions’ compliance with the Official Languages Act (PDF). These measures promote intramural research and scientific publishing in French by introducing incentives to curb biases and revisit perceptions that undermine research in French, and by addressing gaps in data concerning the Canadian Francophonie and official languages.

Chapter 1 Conclusion

The existing work on the state of research in French in Canada has been an important step in documenting the ongoing paradoxical lack of substantive equality within the research ecosystem despite sustained growth in federal funding—from $6.7 billion to $17 billion per year over 25 years. Despite the scale of these investments, the research ecosystem in Canada is based on mechanisms and principles that throw up barriers to substantive equality. This undermines the ability of research in French to play a strategic role in Canada’s economy, social unity and cohesion, recognition of diversity and international standing.

The chapters that follow examine, in greater depth, the situation of French in each of the four quadrants in the proposed typology. They show how the various challenges or barriers present in each quadrant and how they are produced by the mechanisms at work within the research ecosystem. They build on and broaden the scope of existing analyses, which focus primarily on the circumstances of researchers. Lastly, they propose positive measures for implementing, in each quadrant, the Advisory Panel’s three major recommendations as outlined in this chapter: research in French (Chapter 2); training, in French, of the next generation of researchers (Chapter 3); support for national dissemination infrastructures (Chapter 4); and promotion of scientific knowledge in French (Chapter 5).

Chapter 2: Promoting research in French and research on the Francophonie

The Advisory Panel views research in French as a vehicle for knowledge and solidarity rooted in distinct social and cultural representations. The meetings and consultations over the course of the Panel’s mandate revealed that the actors involved in French-language research do their research not only to advance knowledge but also to help improve living conditions and maintain public trust in expertise. These individuals are confident that producing knowledge in French also fosters innovation, technological development and the free exchange of ideas. Such knowledge enriches corpora, supports the design of high-quality language services and strengthens mastery of French-language terminology.

Research in French is central to the development of Canada’s human capital and its economy. As stakeholders emphasized throughout the Advisory Panel’s meetings, promoting research in French contributes to the broader advancement of Canada’s research and innovation capacity.

Canada’s strength in research and post-secondary education—particularly its position as one of the most highly educated populations in the world—is in part due to the presence of an extensive network of French-language and bilingual universities and colleges. By training future experts, these institutions are passing on scientific vocabularies in two international languages. In doing so, they are developing multilingual talent.

Research in French also stimulates creativity through its contact with English and the need to find the right words to express diverse perspectives and inform public debate. The knowledge produced and disseminated by all actors involved in research in French is invaluable to Canada’s future and to the future of scientific multilingualism. It is also a source of collective strength. This is why the Government of Canada must take the necessary measures to pursue meaningful, sustained action consistent with the requirements of the modernized Act.

This chapter shows how the day-to-day barriers operating within the venues (both intramural and extramural) where scientific knowledge is produced undermine the growth and development of the French-speaking scientific community. It focuses on the first quadrant of our typology—research in French—and looks more deeply at the three systemic challenges identified in the previous chapter: normative, financial and organizational.

In addition to identifying and analyzing these challenges, the chapter reviews existing measures to support research in French. It also proposes additional positive measures, including the publication of disaggregated data to enhance the transparency of the granting agencies; targeted incentives to correct evaluation biases; dedicated strategic funding for research in French and research on the Francophonie through the RFSPF; and renewed leadership within the federal public service, in order to empower the members of the federal French-speaking scientific community to pursue research activities in their first official language.

2.1 Normative challenges: bias and perceived linguistic bias in research evaluation

One concern raised by many of the individuals consulted by the Advisory Panel was equal access to funding sources for French-speaking researchers. The three granting agencies are the primary distributors of funding within the research ecosystem in Canada. This funding is essential for carrying out research projects of all sizes, establishing research networks and organizing workshops and symposia.

To assess the advancement of the status and use of French within the granting agencies, the Advisory Panel examined the share of applications submitted in French, success rates by official language and the language profile of the review committees.

2.1.1 Share of applications submitted in French

In its June 2023 report entitled Revitalizing Research and Scientific Publication in French in Canada, the Standing Committee on Science and Research confirmed that the share of funding applications submitted to the three granting agencies in French was lower than the proportion of French-speaking researchers. While Acfas estimated in 2021 that 21% of university professors and post-secondary teaching assistants across Canada were French-speaking, fewer than 15% of applications submitted to the three agencies were written in French. In the case of SSHRC, the share had been declining since the early 1990s.

Figure 6. Percentage of applications received in French by the three granting agencies between 1992 and 2019

Source: House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research

Figure 6. Percentage of applications received in French by the three granting agencies between 1992 and 2019 – text version
Granting Agency Initial Rate (approx.) Final Rate (2019) General Trend
SSHRC 24% 14% Sharp decline
NSERC 9% 7% Slight decline / Volatility
CIHR 8% (in 2001) < 5% Marked decline

Several factors may be at work here, including concerns that applications submitted in French may not receive “due consideration” because of the presumed gaps in reviewers’ French-language proficiency; the lack of institutional support available to French-speaking researchers—particularly in Francophone minority settings—when they are preparing grant applications in their first official language; and the time and effort saved when a proposal and the resulting publications are written in the same language.

[Translation] The first question the team asked itself was, “Should we write the proposal in English or in French?” They chose English because “the evaluation committees are going to be in English, so we’ll be at a disadvantage if we apply in French.” I mean, it’s as simple as that. (Interview conducted on May 27, 2025).

However, on the strength of the data gathered and the consultations conducted, the Advisory Panel was able to take the analysis a step further. The share of grant applications submitted in French varies by granting agency, program type, research area and discipline. Two initial effects are likely at play: disciplinary culture and disciplinary socialization.Footnote 39

Table 1. Share of applications submitted to the granting agencies in French, by programFootnote 40
Agency Program FR Share of applications
CIHR Investigator-initiated research 1.9%
Priority-driven research 4.0%
Awards / Training 12.3%
NSERC Discovery 3.1%
Talents (Awards) 7.1%
SSHRC Insight 14.1%
Partnership 21.4%

First, we note that the proportion of applications submitted in French is higher in the humanities and social sciences. Within the humanities and social sciences, the SSHRC data reveal sharp differences between disciplines. The three disciplines where the rates of application in French are highest are industrial relations (45.7%), archival science (37.5%) and law (27.3%), while the lowest rates are found in interdisciplinary studies (5.9%), geography (6.8%) and economics (8.2%).

Second, certain programs—such as training and professional-support programs, including student scholarship and postdoctoral fellowship programs—show higher rates of applications submitted in French. This pattern may be explained by a disciplinary and career-socialization effect. The longer an individual remains in the field, the more they internalize its norms and expectations, including the perceived advantages of “switching to English.” Given that new entrants have not yet been fully socialized, they tend to have higher application rates in French.

Table 2. Share of applications submitted to the granting agencies in French (Quebec and outside Quebec)
Agency Program % Qc in French % outside QC in French
CIHR Overall (Grants) 8.9% 0.3%
Awards 43.1% 2.2%
NSERC Discovery 12.1% 0.3%
Talent (Awards) 40.9% 1.0%
SSHRC Insight 35.6% 2.6%
Partnership 69.2% 3.3%

The importance of the language context also needs to be emphasized. Applications submitted in French are driven primarily by Quebec. This finding is unsurprising given the number of French-speaking researchers in that province. Outside Quebec, the use of French in grant applications is almost anecdotal, often approaching 0%. The disciplinary trends observed nationwide are also reflected in Quebec. Although French is the province’s official and common language, only 8.9% of applications to the various CIHR funding programs originating in Quebec are written in French, 12.1% for the NSERC Discovery programs. Because a higher number of applications to SSHRC are submitted in French, the data provided allow us to cross-reference geographic location with institution size.

Although Quebec is the bastion of the Canadian Francophonie, its large institutions are the least “Francophone” of all groups: only 47% of their applications are submitted in French, compared with 62% for small institutions. Where application volumes are higher, as in the large Quebec universities, the language of submission is mostly (53%) “English” or “language unknown,” further diluting the share of overall applications submitted in French.

Figure 7. Share of applications submitted to SSHRC in French, by institution size and location
Figure 7. Share of applications submitted to SSHRC in French, by institution size and location – text version
Institution size Quebec (%) Outside Quebec (%)
Large 48 3
Medium 54 2
Small 67 4

While the English-language institutions do raise the overall average, the data nevertheless show that the larger and more research-intensive the institution, the greater the share of applications submitted in English. This is due in particular to the internationalization of these institutions: the diversification of faculty and postdoctoral researcher profiles through international recruitment, the integration of those researchers into international research networks, and the desire to have work peer-reviewed by leading experts in the field of study are all factors that can contribute to anglicization.

In addition to the effects of disciplinary tradition and the potential effects of socialization, there is an additional effect associated with institution size.

Overall, the data from the three agencies show that, despite the formal option to submit applications in the official language of one’s choice, the share of applications submitted in French is generally lower than the demographic weight of Francophones. Beyond the factors outlined above, the qualitative data collected by Acfas underscore that a lack of institutional support—particularly the absence of French-language research-support services—discourages French-speaking researchers from submitting applications in their first official language. As a result, they prefer to write in English—despite the additional effort—rather than submit a French-language application that has not benefited from review and guidance from research-support services.

Our consultations also confirmed the very real perception that applications submitted in French are less likely to be properly understood and assessed by review committees. Several individuals told us that they had concerns about submitting grant applications in French. Others stated that many researchers are Francophone but nevertheless choose to submit in English because they feel their application stands a better chance of being read, approved or selected. Many fear that a funding application submitted in French may be subject to unfavourable bias, closer scrutiny or even incomplete assessment by a reviewer who lacks a sufficient command of French. Finally, others fear that their projects may be evaluated by French-speaking colleagues from abroad whose methodologies, theoretical frameworks, or even evaluation cultures could be detrimental to them.

[Translation] If we submit in French, the reason we are disadvantaged is that the pool of evaluators is smaller [...] If it is sent to English speakers, the risk is not being properly understood. If it is sent to French speakers abroad, they don't always share the same evaluation mindset [...] French colleagues, for example, use fewer superlatives in their reviews. This means that when we find ourselves in evaluation committees, we deal with this kind of clash. People like me have to say, 'Wait, you shouldn't read this evaluation the same way'" (interview conducted on June 5, 2025).

In 2021, CIHR introduced equalization measures under its Project Grant Program to ensure that the share of grants awarded to projects developed in French is at least equal to the share of applications submitted in that language. CIHR also strengthened translation services to ensure access to information in both official languages at all stages of the process, from application to peer review.

NSERC reports that, since fall 2025, members of the Discovery Grant review committees have been sensitized to the importance of research in French as part of their orientation. For its part, SSHRC reports that 75% of the individuals recruited as reviewers self-identify as English-French bilingual.

In addition to being signatories to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), the three granting agencies have also adopted a narrative curriculum vitae, which—they believe—should help reduce bibliometric bias by allowing researchers to better explain the significance of their work. Absent meaningful efforts to raise reviewers’ awareness, however, the narrative format could perpetuate a number of unconscious biases.

Relevant initiatives

The three granting agencies are aware of the low number of applications submitted in French and, over the years, have taken steps to address the issue, including:

  • publishing all their documents in both official languages and encouraging applicants to communicate in the official language of their choice;
  • encouraging researchers to apply for funding in their preferred official language;
  • providing reviewers with training on bias in peer-review processes, including linguistic bias and bias related to institution size, which has an outsized impact on researchers in minority settings;
  • and providing additional space in French-language applications for certain programs.

The Advisory Panel recognizes the clear willingness of the three granting agencies to continue their efforts to eliminate systemic bias, particularly with respect to equitable funding for French-speaking researchers. It believes that addressing perception-based bias and explaining the mechanisms designed to reduce unconscious bias—through presentations and other communication tools—constitutes a best practice. The Advisory Panel also wishes to acknowledge the openness of the three agencies to working with stakeholders in French-language research to improve the situation.

The Government of Canada’s recent announcement that it will continue funding Acfas’s Service d’aide à la recherche en français (SARF) for the duration of Action Plan for Official Languages 2023–2028 represents another federal measure aimed at increasing the number of funding applications submitted to the granting agencies in French. Nevertheless, the various initiatives undertaken by the three agencies to date remain fragmented. The Advisory Panel notes the absence of a common strategy or monitoring mechanism to assess the impact of the measures to encourage the submission of applications in French.

2.1.2 Success rates by language of submission

In its June 2023 report entitled Revitalizing Research and Scientific Publication in French in Canada, the Standing Committee on Science and Research found that average success rates for funding applications submitted to the three granting agencies in French were generally comparable to, or even higher than, those for applications submitted in English. However, these averages belie disparities that emerge when we consider—in addition to language of submission—institution size, geographic location, program type and research discipline.

At CIHR, over the past 10 years, the proportion of applications submitted in French in investigator-initiated and priority-driven research programs was slightly above average (25.5%), and their average success rate was 29.8%, compared with 25.3% for applications submitted in English. French-language applications from Quebec had a higher-than-average success rate (30.2%), while those from other provinces/territories were too few in number (135 applications over 10 years) to draw firm conclusions. At first glance, their success rate (24.4%) appeared to be in line with the overall average. However, the success rate of French-language applications from outside Quebec was particularly low in the investigator-initiated research programs, with only 4 of 73 applications (5.5%) funded over a 10-year period.

In Quebec, applications submitted to the investigator-initiated research programs in French were also proportionally less likely to be funded (12.5%) than those submitted in English (16.4%). Within the priority-driven research programs, the success rate of applications submitted in French across Canada was slightly higher (48.6%) than that of applications submitted in English (46.6%). In summary, although French-language applications to CIHR have a better chance of being funded overall, that advantage is concentrated in the priority-driven programs.

The implementation of equalization measures under the Project Grant Program (Open) in 2021 was intended to address these gaps by ensuring that the share of grants awarded is at least equal to the share of applications submitted.Footnote 41 In the Advisory Panel’s view, CIHR should evaluate these discrepancies and the impact of the corrective measures taken in order to strengthen the confidence of researchers who might want to submit proposals in French.

With respect to training and professional-support programs, French-language applications are funded at a slightly lower rate (14.8%) than applications submitted in English (18.9%).

If we look at the data by research pillar, however, the data provided by CIHR combine the research-grant programs with the training and professional-support programs. Overall, success rates for applications submitted in French are lower than those for English-language applications across all research pillars, except in health systems and services research, where funding rates are broadly equivalent in both official languages.Footnote 42 In the opinion of the Advisory Panel, in order to develop a strategy to eliminate these gaps, they must first be analyzed.

At NSERC, data from 2020 to 2024 show that success rates for applications submitted in English are higher within the Discovery Grants programs. Over the same period, 56% of applications submitted in English were funded, compared with 47% of those submitted in French.Footnote 43

In its 2024 Gender-Based Analysis Plus report, NSERC indicates that for Discovery Grant programs, “applications submitted in French by [early-career researchers] were more likely to be rated lower on all selection criteria and thus were less likely to be awarded.”Footnote 44

According to the same report, institution size and location may also influence success rates. It should also be noted that, outside Quebec, the success rate for applications submitted in French is more than twice as low (24%) as the average success rate (56%). Thus, according to these data and the findings of the report cited, training aimed at addressing institution-based and language-based bias does not appear to have had the intended effects. The Advisory Panel is of the view that NSERC should continue to deepen its multifactor analysis of success rates and, together with the other granting agencies, develop a substantive equality strategy.

With respect to student scholarship and postdoctoral fellowship programs, success rates by official language of application are equivalent: 39% for applications submitted in French, 38% for applications submitted in English. However, French-language applications from Quebec have a slightly higher-than-average success rate (40%), while those from outside Quebec are proportionally less likely to be funded (33%).Footnote 45

At SSHRC, for knowledge-focused programs over the 2015–2024 period, success rates by official language were comparable: 42.2% for applications submitted in French, 42.8% for applications submitted in English.Footnote 46 However, success rates for French-language applications from outside Quebec were lower (31.7%), representing a gap of more than 10 points relative to the average (42.5%). It is worth recalling, here, that French-language applications are subject to bias on two fronts, not only linguistic bias but also bias related to the size and prestige of the institutions where French-speaking researchers predominantly work.

In the case of the Research Partnerships program,Footnote 47 the success rate for applications submitted in French is higher (61%) than that for applications submitted in English (51.9%), but here again, the success rate for French-language applications from outside Quebec is lower (48.7%). These data highlight the more acute need for research support in French for researchers in minority settings, as well as the need to strengthen initiatives to curb linguistic and institution-based bias.

Lastly, SSHRC’s research-training and talent-development award programs show slightly higher success rates for applications submitted in French (40.9%) than for those submitted in English (37.8%).

In an article examining the relationship between language practices and funding success in the social sciences and humanities in Canada, Larrègue and Parvie show that writing a grant proposal in English rather than in French is associated with slightly higher chances of securing funding,Footnote 48 reflecting the greater recognition afforded to applicants who have published in English in prestigious international journals. Thus, the issue is not so much the committees’ ability to assess proposals written in French as the biases that shape how linguistic capital is assigned.

Moreover, this linguistic capital varies across disciplines, depending on how each discipline defines scientific value. In economics, not only are few grant applications submitted in French (3%), but their success rates are also much lower (17%) than those of applications submitted in English (41%).

In criminology, by contrast, the success rate for applications submitted in French is 41%, while that of English-language applications is below 33%. In sum, even after controlling for several variables, English-language applications are more likely to be funded in economics, psychology and management, whereas French-language applications enjoy a slight advantage in literature, history and criminology. This advantage warrants further examination. A number of factors related to the effects of the prestige economy merit closer scrutiny. An examination of those factors could help dismantle the barriers facing funding applications submitted in French in other disciplines.

For disciplines in which French-language applications are least likely to be funded, Larrègue and Parvie note that the criterion relating to the quality of the curriculum vitae (ability) receives the lowest evaluation scores. While disciplines such as history—and, to a lesser extent, political science and sociology—are more critical of journal and publisher hierarchies, in economics and psychology there is broad consensus around such hierarchies, with major English-language journals at the top.

In sum, the symbolic capital associated with publishing in English does play a role in the evaluation of grant applicants’ curricula vitae. The literature cited in an application thus appears to be a determining factor in a number of disciplines. This is without considering the input gathered during the Advisory Panel’s meetings—particularly in minority settings—to the effect that the absence of doctoral programs in several disciplines made it more difficult to integrate students into research teams, which may represent an additional determining factor.

In light of these analyses, one component of the overall strategy proposed for SSHRC would be to strengthen research in French by targeting specific discipline-based review committees.

Taken together, these data on success rates by language point to persistent systemic biases against French in certain programs and discipline-based review committees, while in other cases they reflect perceived bias. In the Advisory Panel’s view, the granting agencies need to deepen their analyses in order to better foster research in French. This would involve a strategy both for increasing the number of applications submitted in French and for curbing linguistic bias and bias against small French-language institutions.

In some cases, the granting agencies will need to target specific discipline-based review committees; in others, particular categories of programs will require tailored measures. Progress-monitoring mechanisms will also be required in order to measure the impact of the strategy.

2.1.3 Language profile of review committees

Many individuals consulted by the Advisory Panel expressed doubts about the ability of peer-review committees to assess French-language applications submitted to the granting agencies. They told us that they were concerned about the situation and its potential implications for their applications.

The data on review committees provided by the granting agencies point to a vicious circle within their evaluation processes: the low number of applications submitted in French, combined with other criteria, serves as justification for recruiting a large majority of reviewers who are not proficient in French; the low share of Francophones on committees then discourages researchers from submitting applications in French.

According to the information provided by CIHR—even though it covers only the period from April 1, 2023, to March 31, 2024—26.8% of reviewers self-report as being able to read and assess an application in French, while 99.8% report being able to do so in English. CIHR also reports that it has stepped up its efforts to recruit French-speaking reviewers and is assessing the impact of those measures on equity within the funding system, including in support for research in French. The Live Caption integrated note-taking system has also been tested in peer-review committees and could be the subject of an impact analysis on the evaluation of funding applications.

As for NSERC’s Discovery programs, between 2015 and 2025, the percentage of individuals self-reporting as able to evaluate applications in both English and French within a given committee ranged from 41.01% to 47.85%. For ad hoc competitions, the linguistic competencies sought when recruiting review-committee members are determined according to the number of applications received in French.Footnote 49

For SSHRC, the data on the linguistic profiles of review-committee members provided to the Advisory Panel for 2023–2024 show that 77% of committee members have English as their primary language, while 23% have French as their primary language.Footnote 50 Their self-reported language proficiency is as follows:

One task for all granting agencies is to take measures to address the concerns and perceptions related to the lack of bilingual reviewers on their review committees. The Government of Canada needs to lead by example, demonstrating transparency and a heightened sense of accountability. It needs to combat systemic bias and negative perceptions.

The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada direct the granting agencies to implement incentives to curb biases and take the following actions to change perceptions about research in French:

  • Publish annually (where this is not already being done): disaggregated data on applications submitted in French, by program family, institution size and region of Canada; disaggregated data on success rates for applications submitted in French, by program family, institution size and region of Canada; and the linguistic profiles of review-committee members.
  • Award additional points to funding applications submitted in French to the RFSPF.

2.2 Supporting college-based research

College-based research occupies a unique place within Canada’s research ecosystem. One area where it differs from university-based research is its nature and objectives. Colleges are key actors in local socio-economic development. They support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and community organizations by responding to concrete innovation needs. College-based research enriches the student experience. It enables students to develop practical competencies and problem-solving skills by working directly with employers, which facilitates their entry into the labour market. In minority settings, colleges also serve as pillars of linguistic and cultural vitality by enabling businesses to access innovation services in French.

Unlike university-based basic research, which is oriented towards publication, college-based research focuses on solving practical problems. According to the briefs submitted to the Advisory Panel, this research is driven by the needs of external partners.Footnote 51 The pace is set by businesses. More than 80% of college-based research projects are completed in under a year.Footnote 52

Case study

INNOV is the applied research and innovation centre of the Collège communautaire du Nouveau-Brunswick (CCNB). It is a perfect illustration of the industrial and technological support mandate of colleges. Since its creation in 2005, INNOV has become a driving force for innovation in Atlantic Canada. The centre is structured around three areas of expertise:

  1. Advanced manufacturing (designated a Technology Access Centre by NSERC).
  2. Advanced materials.
  3. Bioeconomy.

The team carries out more than 60 contracts per year with the private sector, offering services ranging from design and prototyping (development of preliminary versions for testing) to data analysis and technology transfer to improve business productivity.

A compelling example of INNOV’s impact is its collaboration with DJ Marine. The company required specific technical expertise for its boat-building projects. This collaboration has enabled the company to resolve complex problems quickly. According to co-owner Gilles Robichaud, this has allowed them “to avoid mistakes and to save money,” immediately obtaining scientific solutions that would otherwise have taken months of costly trial and error.

Despite its impact, college-based research faces significant barriers to achieving its full potential. Unlike university professors, college instructors generally do not have dedicated research time built into their regular workload. The lack of resources to be able to release instructors from teaching duties represents a major barrier.

More broadly, financial and institutional support for college-based research remains a challenge, particularly in Francophone minority settings. The briefs submitted to the Advisory Panel underscored that funding for college-based research represents only 4% of the Government of Canada’s total research-funding envelope, and that only a fraction of that funding is allocated to colleges serving the Canadian Francophonie.Footnote 53

The College and Community Innovation (CCI) Program, intended for college-level researchers, is administered by NSERC in collaboration with CIHR and SSHRC.

The data for CCI grants funded by NSERC (CCI-NSERC) show that 46% of applications were submitted in French, 98% of which originated in Quebec, illustrating the strength of the CEGEPs in college-level research. The success rate for applications submitted in French was, in fact, higher (67%) than that for applications written in English (64%).

As for CCI grants funded by SSHRC (CCI-SSHRC) between 2020 and 2024, 21% of applications were submitted in French. Their success rate was 76%, compared with 47% for English-language applications. Once again, the CEGEPs emerge as major players, with a success rate of 80% for French-language applications originating in Quebec. Over the reference period, out of a total of 210 applications, only 2 English-language applications were from Quebec and only 4 French-language applications were from outside Quebec.

The statistics for CCI grants funded by CIHR (CCI-CIHR) show that nearly all applications between 2020 and 2024 were submitted in English. In all, only 2 French-language applications originated in Quebec, while 32 English-language applications originated outside Quebec. Slightly more than half of the English-language applications (56%) and 1 of the 2 French-language applications received funding.

[Translation] Applied research is currently an underused lever in the Francophone context […] Francophone partners in college-based applied research do not receive the same level of support as their counterparts in university settings. As a result, it is imperative that there be a review of funding for applied research in colleges and CEGEPs (Interview conducted on June 5, 2025).

In the Advisory Panel’s view, it is essential to revisit funding for applied research in colleges and CEGEPs so that their research can be carried out under more favourable conditions and more effectively shared with target audiences.

2.3 The impact of anglodominant culture on intramural research

Under Part V of the Act, public servants in regions designated bilingual for language-of-work purposes have the right to work in the official language of their choice. However, numerous reports and studies—including Official Languages in the Federal Public Service—underscore the persistent challenges of working in French. As the study notes, “federal institutions have a poor track record for allowing employees to use their preferred official language with supervisors when drafting documents or during meetings,”Footnote 54 a finding corroborated by TBS’s 2022 and 2023 annual reports.

This finding is consistent with what the Advisory Panel heard during its consultations with federal institutions. During meetings with these institutions, the vast majority of the participants were unable to demonstrate concrete actions taken within their sectors to implement positive measures enabling French-speaking researchers to work in French and fully contribute to the advancement of scientific knowledge. Also during these meetings, it was impossible, in many cases, to identify what positive measures were in place to enable the institutions to meet their obligation to make research results available in both of Canada’s official languages.

French-speaking researchers in departments with research responsibilities need to have access to tools, research infrastructures and environments that allow them to create, collaborate and build knowledge in their language. By way of example, few individuals were able to provide information on the state of original scientific production in French within federal departments. The language used in laboratories and the operational practices of major research infrastructures in Canada appear to be poorly adapted to the needs of French-speaking researchers who wish to work in the official language of their choice.

Overall, the Advisory Panel found that French plays a marginal role in research activities conducted within the federal public service. This finding is all the more concerning in light of the new commitments in Part VII of the Act. Part VII now recognizes the Government of Canada’s duty to take positive measures to enhance the vitality and support and assist the development of official language minority communities, including measures to “support the creation and dissemination of information in French that contributes to the advancement of scientific knowledge in any discipline.” Government research environments are not exempt from the Part VII duties.

Relevant initiatives

The Advisory Panel identified a number of pockets of best practices. For example:

  • Statistics Canada: The Agency plays a vital role in the production of knowledge on the state of French, both in Quebec and in minority settings. It has also recently published the results of the post-censal survey, which documents the situation of official language minority communities in greater detail.
  • Public Health Agency of Canada: Through its “Science in French” initiative, the Agency is strengthening its institutional capacity by creating bilingual tools and promoting scientific evidence in French.
  • Health Canada: Through the Official Languages Health Program, the Department supports training and targeted research (Consortium national de formation en français), as well as knowledge dissemination (Société Santé en français).

While the Advisory Panel did identify a few initiatives and best practices, it was unable to confirm, through its consultations, that public servants—particularly senior managers—fully understand their duty to take positive measures, which may include measures to support the creation and dissemination of information in French that contributes to the advancement of scientific knowledge in any discipline.

The new measures provided for in the Act to advance the substantive equality of the official languages—and the additional powers conferred on the Treasury Board, particularly with respect to oversight of positive measures by federal institutions—should help improve the situation, but they have been slow to materialize. The Advisory Panel expects more sustained leadership from all federal science-based institutions. To promote French within federal science-based institutions (intramural), the Government of Canada needs to take several measures:

The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada strengthen federal institutions’ compliance with the Official Languages Act (PDF) by supporting intramural French-language scientific research and publishing through the following actions:

  • Development, by the Treasury Board Secretariat, of an enabling framework to promote French in federal research and guide federal science-based institutions in their efforts to meet their linguistic obligations.
  • Leadership, by the Office of the Chief Science Advisor for Canada, of a coordination table to promote French within the federal scientific community, with the support of the SCRF and TBS. This recommendation could be accompanied by a measurable target, namely that, within five years, a dynamic interdepartmental network would be able to coordinate efforts to promote research in French.
  • A special investigation, by the Commissioner of Official Languages, into official languages compliance in federal public service institutions with research responsibilities.

The Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages issued a statement welcoming the new measure whereby public servants can be supervised in the official language of their choice.Footnote 55 However, there does not appear to be a systematic process for documenting and sharing best practices related to official languages within federal institutions with research responsibilities, or within the granting agencies. The Advisory Panel noted the existence of the Departmental Science Advisors Network, but it is impossible to tell whether that network operates in both official languages.

The Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages needs to play a more sustained role in helping to improve the situation of federal public servants working in research sectors within the Government of Canada and their ability to do so in the official language of their choice. The proposed special investigation would therefore serve to:

2.4 Supporting research on Francophone issues

The term “research in French” can mean one of two things. First, it can refer to the work of any individual who conducts research activities in French, including a broad spectrum of activities ranging from design to publication to knowledge popularization in media or on social media.

Second, it can refer to research on what may be termed “Francophone issues,” a term that covers all issues addressed by this field of study and research in numerous disciplines within the humanities and social sciences, as well as health. It consists of programs of study, research teams, centres and laboratories led by researchers with recognized expertise in the field. These researchers are based in Quebec and in Francophone minority settings and may even work in English-language universities. They play a vital role within the research ecosystem by sustaining research traditions that have developed over time. Their work also helps document the distinctiveness of the Francophonie in Canada in relation to other international contexts. It is central to public-policy development in a number of sectors, including immigration, justice, language technologies and health. Research on Francophone issues has also led to numerous innovations, including the creation of tools such as Antidote and new terminology—such as pourriel and divulgacheur—that better captures the Francophone reality in Canada.

The Advisory Panel also views research in French or on Francophone issues as closely linked to the production of knowledge that is important and valuable to local/regional communities, and to economic development in minority settings. The research on these communities needs to be present in public debate, as it often lends a different perspective to issues, the perspective of small populations who experience the effects of change differently because of their status. Research on the Francophonie can also foster civic participation by making certain issues more visible within specific communities. Lastly, such research can help tailor public services to specific contexts.

[Translation] It is unsurprising that the work conducted by our researchers outside Quebec is so useful and important, not only in telling our story but also in shedding light on realities on the ground, which, naturally, allows us to share those realities with public decision-makers (interview conducted on October 10, 2025).

2.4.1 The need for data on Francophone minority settings

The people we consulted, particularly those in minority settings, indicated that the data on their communities remained insufficient. When proposing policies or programs, community organizations have to deal with fragmented or difficult-to-access data sets.

[Translation] I would say that there is a real thirst for evidence-based data on Francophone minority communities—in all areas (interview conducted on October 10, 2025).

Research on Francophone issues also raises significant challenges involving transferability and recognition, particularly in minority settings. In the humanities and social sciences, as well as in certain areas of health research, knowledge produced in large social contexts—such as the American, French and Anglo-Canadian contexts—cannot readily be applied to minority communities. The Canadian Francophonie needs data that will enable it to understand its own realities.

[Translation] When studying small populations like Francophones, it is difficult to obtain solid evidence; surveys should give the same level of attention to language as they do to sex (interview conducted on May 28, 2025).

The post-censal Survey on the Official language Minority Population contains useful data for conducting research on the Canadian Francophonie (Statistics Canada, 2023). However, this survey is conducted infrequently. Nearly 20 years had elapsed before a second edition of this survey was conducted and published in 2025. During our meetings with several organizations within the Canadian Francophonie —including the ACUFC, the Fédération de la jeunesse canadienne-française (FJCF) and the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada (FCFA)—participants stated emphatically that [Translation] “communities are hungry for evidence-based data” in a number of priority sectors: education, health, employment and the labour market.

Relevant initiative

The Association canadienne-française de l’Alberta (ACFA) has created veriFRAB, to make research on Alberta’s francophonie more accessible to that community.

The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada make permanent Statistics Canada’s Survey on Official language Minority Population.

2.4.2 Supporting research in French and research on the Francophonie through the RFSPF

The Research in French Support and Promotion Fund (RFSPF) would include a Knowledge component, “Francophone missions,” designed to support both research in French and research on the Francophonie. The designation “Francophone missions” would provide direction for the recommended investments, with a view to funding research chairs, teams and projects focused on themes deemed essential to advancing the Francophonie in Canada and within the international Francophone space. Footnote 56 As noted earlier, dedicated funding will be particularly important to support research conducted in small institutions, research in the college sector and research topics too often considered marginal despite their importance in Francophone minority settings.

The Advisory Panel is of the view that establishing a program entitled “Francophone missions” is of strategic importance. Such a program would help dismantle existing barriers by recognizing the full legitimacy of French as a language of science and as a research topic in its own right. For example, these new investments would enable French-speaking researchers to boost their research capacity, foster creativity and attract talent in both official languages. The program would be indispensable to any science strategy that aims to be innovative and internationally influential.

The RFSPF’s Knowledge component would therefore include three separate research programs, worth $10 million each, under the name “Missions francophones,” accessible to post-secondary institutions across the country in all disciplines. A further $10 million would be earmarked for initiatives in the area of broadcasting, as described in the chapters that follow.

As an initial step, to boost researchers’ capacity to conduct research in French, the RFSPF would provide $10 million in annual funding for research projects on themes relevant to the Canadian and international Francophonie. The SSHRC Research Support Fund and the NSERC College and Community Innovation Program would be involved in administering this funding. The themes would be specified in the calls for proposals.

As a second step, to enable researchers to strengthen connections and work collaboratively in order to maximize their impact, the RFSPF would provide an additional $10 million per year to support international partnership-based teams. These teams would include, at a minimum, one post-secondary institution in Quebec, one post-secondary institution in the Canadian Francophonie outside Quebec, and one post-secondary institution from the international Francophonie. The program would serve to produce knowledge on themes that are a priority for the international Francophonie as a whole. The program would be led by Global Affairs Canada and administered by the Tri-agency Institutional Programs Secretariat (TIPS), housed within SSHRC. The themes would be determined in collaboration with Global Affairs Canada.

As a third step, to support research on the Canadian Francophonie, the RFSPF would provide $10 million per year to establish a Canada Research Chairs program on the Canadian Francophonie, thereby helping to strengthen research capacity in minority settings. These research chairs would focus on themes considered essential to the vitality and development of the Canadian Francophonie, thereby responding to the needs of Francophone communities and universities alike. This program, too, would be managed by TIPS.

The Advisory Panel views the RFSPF as an indispensable lever for bringing about the cultural shift long awaited by stakeholders in French-language research across Canada. The RFSPF would adopt an approach conducive to constructive action in support of substantive equality.

Like the other components of the RFSPF, this component would be coordinated by the Secretariat for the Coordination of Research in French (SCRF). The SCRF would develop a “francophone lens” consistent with TBS guidelines. That lens would help the granting agencies implement coordinated initiatives tailored to the challenges of scientific production in French. The lens would serve as an impact analysis tool, comparable to mechanisms already in place at such departments as Employment and Social Development Canada, Health Canada, and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. The Francophone lens for research is the normative tool needed to dismantle the explicit and implicit anglonormative mechanisms within the research ecosystem in Canada.

The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada create, under the RFSPF, three “Francophone Missions” programs, each funded to the tune of $10 million per year:

  • Research support: Funding for projects on themes that strengthen research in French.
  • International teams: Support for multidisciplinary partnerships (French-speaking Canada, Quebec, international).
  • Research chairs: Establishment of Chairs of Excellence (CRCFC) focused on the needs of communities and post-secondary institutions in minority settings.

In addition to coordinating the various components of the RFSPF, the Advisory Panel recommends:

  • That the Secretariat for the Coordination of Research in French develop a differentiated approach by establishing a “Francophone lens” consistent with Treasury Board Secretariat guidelines.

Chapter 2 Conclusion

The picture painted in this chapter is clear: while research in French holds immense potential for innovation and community vitality, it faces barriers that hinder its full development and the achievement of substantive equality. Concerning the challenges outlined in the introduction—the influence of linguistic bias, implicit definitions of excellence, concentration of funding, marginalization of research in minority communities and colleges—we have reached the following conclusions:

Chapter 3: Supporting the training, in French, of the next generation of researchers

Securing the future of French-language research in Canada hinges, above all, on the capacity for renewal within that research. There is an extensive network of French-language and bilingual colleges and universities that makes a remarkable contribution to talent development. The more students are trained in French, the more they will be able to play a key role across a wide range of settings. Indeed, according to the data, a well-trained population—one that also has a command of scientific vocabularies in both English and French—is more employable at the local, national and international levels.Footnote 57

This chapter focuses on the second quadrant of our typology, “training, in French, of the next generation of researchers.” It shows that the next generation of French-speaking researchers faces a series of barriers that can be traced back to the three major categories of challenges identified.

  1. The normative challenge (3.1) is associated with pressures on the next generation of researchers to publish in English. The Advisory Panel has observed just how pivotal training of the next generation is to socialization and knowledge transmission. New entrants to the research ecosystem quickly internalize the norms and expectations of their discipline, including the pressure to publish in English.
  2. The financial challenge (3.2) relates to the material resources required to pursue an education. The disproportionate financial vulnerability of Francophone students, the lack of open educational resourcesFootnote 58 and French-language training programs, and the limited mobility opportunities to break isolation constitute additional barriers to training.
  3. The organizational challenge (3.3) is linked to the absence of mechanisms for coordination among partners and the lack of evidence-based data to guide educational offerings in minority settings, which weakens program availability.

The modernized Act commits the Government of Canada to “advancing formal, non-formal and informal opportunities for members of English and French linguistic minority communities to pursue quality learning in their own language throughout their lives, including from early childhood to post-secondary education.”

With that in mind, the Advisory Panel is proposing a set of measures to support the fairness and sustainability of training in French for the next generation of researchers. To address the normative challenge, the Panel proposes targeted actions to monitor student enrolment, enhance the visibility of theses written in French and ensure the inclusion of diverse talent, thereby ensuring a future generation of researchers that are competent, visible and representative. To address the financial challenge, it proposes establishing a scholarship program for studies in minority settings, funding a consortium to develop instructional materials, and enhancing student mobility programs. To address the organizational challenge, it proposes breaking down silos through the establishment of a pan-Canadian coordination mechanism on post-secondary education in French.

3.1 Trends in enrolment and thesis writing

The Advisory Panel examined trends, by province and territory, in student enrolment at the undergraduate, master’s and doctoral levels for French-language programs offered by universities over the past 10 years. It also examined the share of theses written in French.

3.1.1 Enrolment

The education data reveal a concerning trend: the share of students enrolled in French-language or bilingual educational institutions declines as students move through the education system, from elementary, to secondary, to college/university.Footnote 59 The accelerated aging of the French-speaking population in minority settings—particularly the under-representation of individuals aged 15 to 24 (14.6% vs. 18.2% in the English-speaking population)—means a smaller pool of potential students for post-secondary studies.Footnote 60

According to Statistics Canada, just under half (roughly 45%) of graduates of French-language secondary schools outside Quebec who went to university chose a French-language or bilingual institution. The figure is approximately 40% for those who chose college.Footnote 61 These data nevertheless warrant qualification: young people attending such an institution are not necessarily studying in French or enrolled in a bilingual program. In fact, it is possible to be enrolled at a bilingual university—such as the University of Ottawa—while pursuing an academic pathway that is exclusively in English. The actual loss of enrolment in French-language programs may therefore be underestimated if the analysis focuses solely on institutional characteristics.

The National Graduates Survey reveals that, in Canada outside Quebec, fewer than 37% of French-mother-tongue university graduates completed their studies entirely in French. These data point to a persistent loss of linguistic continuity in the educational pathways of French-speaking youth in minority settings. Moreover, these data do not account for graduates of immersion programs, whose French-language pathway often ends after secondary school. This represents an additional loss for the next generation of French speakers.Footnote 62

[Translation] We need to secure the future of Campus Saint-Jean in Alberta [...]: It is a recognized historic institution central to the Franco-Albertan community and one of the only places where students can pursue undergraduate, master’s and now doctoral studies (interview conducted on March 3, 2025).

In the view of the Advisory Panel, the Government of Canada needs to monitor enrolment trends more closely at all levels of study, by province and territory, institution, discipline and language of instruction, while also strengthening the collection, processing and dissemination of data by Statistics Canada. According to the information gathered by the Advisory Panel, Health Canada collects this type of data from the Consortium national de formation en santé (CNFS) for training programs supported under the Official Languages Health Program, a best practice that other federal institutions could emulate.

Where possible, it is essential to incorporate linguistic variables into existing surveys and statistical tables related to graduation, labour-market integration and teaching staff, in order to inform policies that support the training of the next generation of French-speaking researchers across Canada. This mechanism should also provide data on French-language programs lost and gained in post-secondary institutions across the country. To that end, all partners—including post-secondary institutions, as well as provincial and territorial governments—need to recognize the necessity of sharing their data with Statistics Canada.

Building on the tools and practices put in place to fulfill the Government of Canada’s commitment, under Part VII of the Official Languages Act (PDF) i.e. to periodically estimate the number of children whose parents have the right to have them educated in the minority language—the Advisory Panel recommends:

  • That Statistics Canada, in collaboration with the provincial and territorial governments, establish a national mechanism for tracking and producing linguistic data covering enrolment and graduation at all levels of education, including the language profiles of faculty members within French-language and bilingual post-secondary institutions in Canada.

3.1.2 Language of theses

The Advisory Panel organized and participated in meetings with French-speaking students enrolled in a wide range of programs, including programs in Quebec. One major challenge for the future of French in research environments identified during those meetings was that many students are writing their theses in English.

In his work, Roy has shown that between 2000 and 2022, 62% of master’s and doctoral theses prepared by students enrolled in a Quebec university were written in French.Footnote 63 The situation becomes more concerning when we look at language choices over time. While 82% of graduate-level output was produced in French in 2000, by 2022 that proportion had fallen to 50%. The option to submit theses in the form of articles rather than as a single manuscript is contributing to the trend, but it is also indicative of a development that does not bode well for the future of research and the communication of research results in French.

For their part, Rocher and Stockemer report that, in their dissemination strategies, French-speaking students at the University of Ottawa do not devalue producing in French and that a majority of them (77%) even see a potential upside. They also note that:

[Translation] A slightly higher share of French-speaking students (11.5% vs. 9.1%) associate dissemination in English, as opposed to French, with a potential negative impact, whereas most English-speaking students (60%) believe that French would not be disadvantageous for them, though they do view the impact of dissemination in English more positively (84.7%).Footnote 64

Lastly, pressures from research and publishing environments, as well as from the labour market—where English is often considered an essential language—reveal institutional dynamics, including biases, that contribute to the erosion of French as a language of scientific production.

For example, meetings with students revealed that reasons for choosing to write a thesis in English are rooted in performance-based biases. These individuals are often influenced by their research supervisors, who suggest that they write their work in English so that they can publish it in international journals.

French-language and bilingual universities have a mandate to train people who can produce and disseminate knowledge in French. Allowing students to write theses in English undermines that mandate by making that knowledge less accessible to other students and to the French-speaking population as a whole. As a result, governments, professionals, including teachers, journalists and members of civil-society organizations are unable to access cutting-edge research in French.

Theses are essential for sharing knowledge and preparing the next generation for careers in teaching, research and scientific communication. Writing one’s thesis in French does not preclude disseminating one’s work in English in Canadian or international forums. International visibility can be achieved through English-language abstracts, translations or derivative publications, without undermining French as a language of knowledge. Moreover, encouraging the writing of theses in French, while supporting their translation and dissemination in more than one language, is key to preserving linguistic and cultural diversity in research.

The federal granting agencies could play a key role in encouraging students to write their theses or dissertations in French and in addressing any unconscious bias influencing what language they chose to write their work in. For example, they could require, as part of their master’s and doctoral scholarship programs, that any thesis written in English within a program offered or taken in French include, at a minimum, a French-language introduction and conclusion, along with a French-language summary intended for media and the general public.

The Advisory Panel recommends:

  • That Library and Archives Canada revise the Theses Canada program, in collaboration with its partners, to require that all doctoral theses deposited include, at a minimum, extended abstracts (three pages each) in both English and French, in order to ensure the discoverability and accessibility of this work.

3.2 Support for students

Funding for students in the form of scholarships is a fundamental enabler of access to education, perseverance and academic success. The Advisory Panel has identified three main types of funding to support students who wish to pursue graduate-level studies:

Our review did not focus on financial support offered by private foundations, which was out of scope. That being said, many endowed scholarships, such as those from the Baxter and Alma Ricard Foundation for the Canadian Francophonie or the Trudeau Foundation, are incorporated into institutional financial-aid offerings. While recognizing the importance of providing financial support to undergraduate students, the Advisory Panel focused in particular on highlighted in the brief submitted by Acfas to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research in 2023. Acfas showed that current scholarship-allocation mechanisms favour the large, often English-language, research-intensive universities, to the detriment of small and medium-sized institutions, particularly those serving Francophone minority communities.Footnote 65

This dependence on federal scholarships is due to the costs incurred by students in pursuing their education outside the region where they live. Given that programs are often in short supply in minority settings, students rely on federal scholarships to help cover tuition and travel costs. The results of the National Graduates Survey also reveal higher levels of debt among those who had studied in French than among those who had studied in English. Within minority communities, average debt among graduates who had studied in French was $16,800 at the college level and $35,000 at the university level, compared with $16,200 and $31,000 respectively for those who studied in English.Footnote 66 When considering broad geographic regions, regardless of program language, it is in the Atlantic region that university graduates have the highest student debt. Moreover, those who had studied in French in Atlantic Canada were, on average, the most indebted group ($39,000).

[Translation] I think that, at the Université de Moncton, the most pressing need is scholarships. The granting agencies give us enough funding to provide 8 scholarships for roughly 40 master’s students. That’s the real challenge for us: we’re unable to hold on to strong candidates. People ask us why we don’t recruit in France or Belgium. Obviously, if we are asking for full tuition with no exemptions and we have no scholarships to offer, they’ll go to Quebec […]. Universities allocate scholarships on the basis of the funding they receive […]. Is there a model that could better support us small and medium-sized universities, in Francophone minority settings, for example? (interview conducted on October 7, 2025).

Moreover, the data on the exact share of federal scholarships awarded to French-speaking individuals are not available by institution. For example, SSHRC’s annual reports contain some linguistic indicators, but the data are partial and not systematically broken down by language of study, or first official language spoken or mother tongue of the recipient. The Science and Research Standing Committee (SRSR) report indicates that the absence of linguistic disaggregation prevents any analysis of funding distribution. This lack of transparency makes it difficult to assess the needs of French-speaking students across the country.

The data obtained by the Advisory Panel point to a contrast between the three granting agencies. While the success rates of applications submitted in English and French to the SSHRC and NSERC scholarship and research-training programs demonstrate relative parity—with even a slight advantage for French-language applications (see Chapter 2)—the situation at CIHR is quite different. In the area of health, French-language applications are funded at a slightly lower rate (14.8%) than applications submitted in English (18.9%).

Moreover, the success rates of French-language applications to SSHRC and NSERC are driven by the performance of Quebec-based institutions: French-language proposals from Quebec achieve above-average success rates, whereas applications originating from minority settings outside Quebec are proportionally less likely to be funded. In the view of a number of the stakeholders consulted, a dedicated scholarship program for French-speaking students in minority settings is essential to closing these gaps.

In conclusion, it is vital that the federal granting agencies ensure scholarship-allocation processes are equitable within the meaning of the Act and recognized as such by the scientific community across the country.

The Advisory Panel recommends:

  • That—where this is not already being done—the three granting agencies publish disaggregated data on scholarship funding by language of submission, language of study in the relevant program and applicant’s first official language spoken, in order to support a rigorous assessment of linguistic equity in the allocation of these scholarships.
  • That a graduate scholarship program, administered by the granting agencies, be created to support students in Francophone minority settings who wish to pursue their education in French.

3.2.1 Student mobility

To date, there are very few pan-Canadian mobility programs. Yet such programs are invaluable for the scientific socialization of students, in some cases allowing them to complete their academic training, meet experts in their field of study, do internships in research laboratories or industry, participate in summer schools, complete joint-supervision theses, or take part in cooperation projects. Above all, such experiences help strengthen scientific socialization in French. Such mobility is all the more relevant for those studying in a Francophone minority context or at English-language universities.

The Advisory Panel identified three exchange programs for French-speaking students across the country, one of which has been discontinued. These are:

More broadly, the Advisory Panel noted three factors that limit French-speaking students’ access to mobility programs:

[Translation] Right now, I have a master’s student who is going to attend her first symposium. And she is wondering where she’ll come up with the funding to attend that symposium. And the institution’s response is, basically, that I have to fund it (interview conducted on March 3, 2025).

The Advisory Panel considers it important to maintain existing initiatives and recommends enhancing current programs in order to remove the barriers identified above. It also recognizes that special attention should be given to French-speaking or Francophile students enrolled at English-language universities, so that they can benefit from French-language immersion experiences through these mobility programs.

The Advisory Panel recommends:

  • That Canadian Heritage, in collaboration with provincial and territorial governments, support and enhance existing French-language student mobility programs, including Côte à Côte and Acfas’s research mobility program, so that they are sustainable and accessible to all post-secondary institutions across the country.

3.2.2 Instructional resources in French

Strong institutional support is essential to ensuring high-quality training in French for students enrolled in programs at French-language and bilingual institutions across the country. Access to French-language instructional materials varies widely by province, discipline and type of institution.

The situational overview conducted by the Advisory Panel reveals that:

[Translation] If I could create a book fund, it would be for open-access French-language university textbooks. Frankly, that would be a very attractive step (interview conducted on May 29, 2025).

Initiatives such as the Érudit platform have demonstrated their potential to host open-access instructional content by field of study. More than 95% of the content disseminated by Érudit is open access, with over 42 million downloads per year (in 2024), most of that content (70%) originating outside the country. A significant share of downloads are by university and college students, as demonstrated by the platform’s internal data. However, Érudit’s primary mandate remains focused on scholarly dissemination rather than on textbooks. In the Atlantic region, a pilot project initiated by the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI) demonstrated the feasibility of producing open textbooks.Footnote 70 In addition, national organizations, including the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, point out that in smaller markets, a model supported solely by commercial publishers has limitations and requires public support.Footnote 71

In short, there are several fields in which students have limited access to French-language instructional resources to support their training. Initiatives to address the issue are few and far between and do not cover all academic fields. Projects to develop French-language textbooks cannot rely solely on the goodwill of professors who agree to make their course materials available online. The Advisory Panel considers it imperative that the Government of Canada propose positive measures and incentives to support access to knowledge in French.

The Advisory Panel recommends:

  • That Canadian Heritage, in collaboration with Francophone and bilingual publishers and university presses across the country, fund the creation of a national consortium for the production, adaptation and dissemination of French-language instructional resources for post-secondary education.

3.3 Programs

The decline in the number of students enrolled in programs of study offered in French—particularly in minority settings—can be attributed to both structural and symbolic factors. These factors include the limited availability of programs, competition with English-language programs, the perception—particularly in the natural sciences and engineering—of an academic or professional disadvantage to studying in French, and the issue of student mobility.Footnote 72 Students consulted by the Advisory Panel identified the vulnerability of post-secondary institutions in minority settings, particularly in Western Canada, as a key factor in deciding whether or not to pursue their studies in French.

Moreover, for many of these young people, attending a post-secondary institution in a minority setting does not mean that they will be enrolled in a program offered in French or even bilingually across all levels of study. Indeed, it is possible to be enrolled in a bilingual institution—such as the University of Ottawa—while following a mixed (English-French) academic pathway or one conducted entirely in English, particularly in certain science and engineering programs.

While French-language programs do exist at the college or university undergraduate level in most provinces and territories, program availability varies from region to region and from one institution to the next. University undergraduate programs are mainly concentrated in Quebec, New Brunswick and Ontario. Elsewhere in the country, few programs are offered entirely in French, particularly in engineering, the natural sciences, health and technology, which significantly limits students’ choices.

Moreover, in minority settings, there are insufficient master’s and doctoral programs to train the next generation of researchers. In this regard, the Advisory Panel welcomes the creation of a new doctoral program in Transdisciplinary Studies offered in French at the University of Alberta’s Faculté Saint-Jean. However, the Panel finds it concerning that this program is subject to the same funding rules as the University of Alberta’s large faculties: each student admitted to a doctoral program at the university must receive funding of $100,000. This constitutes a significant barrier to admission for doctoral-level students at Campus Saint-Jean, which does not benefit from the same resources as other faculties.

That said, students outside Quebec who choose to pursue graduate-level university studies in French face difficult choices. Limited program availability forces young people to choose between remaining in their region—possibly pursuing their studies at an English-language institution—or relocating to a region where the program is offered in French. These choices entail significant financial and human costs that seriously affect students’ educational pathways and hinder their labour-market integration. They also have consequences for the next generation of researchers.

[Translation] We know that role models are very important for elementary- and secondary-school students. It’s really important to model the fact that science happens in French, too, ... to help young people understand that pursuing science in French is a realistic option, and to help them develop a sense of belonging so they don’t feel they have to choose between being Francophone and being a scientist (interview conducted on June 11, 2025).

During the consultations, many participants said they wanted the Government of Canada to do more to support the development of graduate-level programs in sectors key to the vitality of Francophone communities, such as health and technology, programs that would be responsive to changing labour-market needs. Aware that this is an exclusive jurisdiction of the provinces and territories, stakeholders see a critical need to foster partnerships and collaboration among French-language and bilingual colleges and universities across the country in order to encourage the creation of tailored programs of study, particularly to train the next generation in Francophone minority communities. This type of collaboration can also lead to improved research opportunities in French for graduate students.

To this end, the Advisory Panel recommends that Canadian Heritage, in the context of its multilateral relations with the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC) and with the provinces and territories, coordinate the establishment of a coordination mechanism bringing together French-language post-secondary education partners in Canada. That mechanism, which would include colleges and universities, provinces, territories and the relevant federal departments, would be mandated to increase collaboration and the number of programs offered in French in minority settings. Priority would be given to emerging health-science programs at colleges, to STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) programs at universities, and to graduate-level programs in the humanities and social sciences.

Among the barriers to developing programs in French, the Advisory Panel notes a lack of qualified individuals able to supervise research in French. In minority settings, post-secondary institutions often have to rely on staff from other regions or direct students towards research supervision in English. The consultations revealed a lack of access to public data, by discipline and by institution, on individuals able to teach and supervise research in French. The Advisory Panel is of the opinion that measures are needed to identify such individuals. Hiring professors in underrepresented disciplines at French-language and bilingual colleges and universities in minority settings could also help address this issue.

The Advisory Panel recommends:

  • That Government of Canada funding dedicated to the Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy in Minority French-Language Schools – Education in the Minority Language be extended to the post-secondary level to enable the hiring of professors in underrepresented disciplines at French-language and bilingual colleges and universities in minority settings.

3.3.1 Promoting inclusion and recognizing the plurality of pathways taken by French-speaking students from underrepresented groups

The Advisory Panel has noted the absence of readily accessible data combining language of study, underrepresented groups and socio-economic status. The Panel focused, in particular, on the situation of racialized French-speaking students, given their growing presence in minority settings.Footnote 73 However, with few exceptions, neither educational institutions nor Statistics Canada publish data that would allow us to document the pathways taken by these students, particularly at the graduate level. This lack of information precludes any rigorous assessment of their needs or participation, or the impact of the initiatives put in place.

The University of Ottawa has conducted several internal surveys revealing that nearly half of racialized students have reported experiencing challenging situations during their studies;Footnote 74 however, these data are neither systematically collected nor cross-tabulated by language of study, which limits their usefulness in developing targeted actions. And yet, the barriers reported by racialized students in these surveys may be exacerbated by the combined effects of linguistic, cultural and socio-economic factors.

The following are some of key findings from the Advisory Panel’s literature review and consultations:

3.3.2 Access to scholarships and targeted programs

The Advisory Panel has observed that scholarship programs specifically targeting racialized French-speaking graduate students are rare. Some pan-Canadian programs, such as the Indigenous | Black Engineering | Technology PhD Project (IBET PhD ProjectFootnote 76), and certain scholarships offered by universities or private businesses (e.g. Deloitte or Queen’s University in KingstonFootnote 77) target students belonging to visible minority groups in general.

However, few programs take linguistic factors or the Francophone minority context into account in their calls for applications. This situation can create a disconnect between the needs expressed by French-speaking racialized students and the implicit anglonormative criteria of excellence programs. It calls for more fulsome consideration of initial circumstances, non-linear pathways and the strengths associated with the diversity of experiences of racialized individuals from Francophone backgrounds.

[Translation] There is even a broader exclusion of racialized students and faculty from discussions around the Francophonie, despite the fact that the Francophonie owes much of its vibrancy to this diversity—a diversity that remains insufficiently recognized within institutions (interview conducted on June 9, 2025).

Lastly, including, and considering the needs of, French-speaking racialized students in training the next generation is a matter of social justice. French-language and bilingual colleges and universities need to recognize the multiple pathways and lived realities of all their students, including those belonging to racialized groups. The Government of Canada also has obligations toward these individuals under its Gender-based Analysis Plus programs.Footnote 78

The Advisory Panel is proposing three measures to help establish an inclusive approach to training the next generation of researchers:

  • That the next bilateral agreement on education between the Government of Canada and the provincial and territorial governments include dedicated funding and hiring targets for racialized French-speaking professors in fields where they are underrepresented relative to the French-speaking population in Canada.
  • That the next bilateral agreement on education between the Government of Canada and the provincial and territorial governments include dedicated funding for the creation of a scholarship program covering all levels of study to improve access to French-language training programs for French-speaking racialized students.
  • That Statistics Canada collect and disseminate data by first official language spoken, underrepresented group and socio-economic status for students in French-language or bilingual post-secondary institutions.

Chapter 3 Conclusion

Sustaining French as a language of research in Canada will require pan-Canadian investments in training a next generation of researchers in French. Ensuring sustainable French-language instruction in all disciplines requires a critical mass of individuals, including international students. When they reach a critical mass, post-secondary institutions are able to offer more programs of study and better learning conditions, become more attractive to the research community and the broader ecosystem, and thus compete more effectively in the post-secondary education market in Canada and internationally.

Despite their challenges, colleges and universities help connect people to one another. They create wealth when they produce grounded, relevant knowledge that contributes to the advancement of communities, including businesses. In the Canadian Francophonie, the presence of such institutions helps counter brain drain toward larger centres, leading to stronger community vitality. By training a highly qualified and bilingual workforce, the institutions strengthen and expand the supply of services in French in key sectors such as health, education, justice and public administration.

Stronger support for training the next generation in French drives skills development and capacity-building, enhances the vitality of Francophone communities—for example, through greater inclusion of people from racialized backgrounds—and sustains an intellectual tradition that is critical to organizations and communities as they work to adapt and thrive in a constantly changing world.

Chapter 4: Scholarly communications in French

The dissemination of research results is an essential component of any research ecosystem. Regardless of the language used during a research project, the choice of language at the results dissemination stage—that is, at the final stage of the project—will potentially be the most important in terms of the visibility of those results.

Researchers disseminate the results of their work and make their discoveries or innovations known through a variety of channels. While peer-reviewed scientific articles have become the primary vehicle for communication, scholarly books also occupy an important place in the dissemination of knowledge in the social sciences and humanities, both nationally and internationally, while technical reports and patent filings continue to be used in other fields. What is more, scientific conferences continue to serve as key venues for interaction and exchange within the scientific community.

This chapter focuses on the third quadrant of our typology, “scholarly communications in French.” It presents an unequivocal finding: in Canada, as elsewhere, English has come to dominate scholarly communications. To gain an understanding of these dynamics, the Advisory Panel analyzed the scientific-knowledge dissemination chain through the lenses of normative, financial and technological challenges.

To secure the future of research in French, it is not enough to produce that research; the research must also be made visible, discoverable and accessible. The recommendations in this chapter aim to strengthen Canadian dissemination infrastructures (scholarly journals, university presses and digital platforms) so that they can play this strategic role. They involve leveraging new machine translation technologies to make scientific knowledge more widely available in both official languages.

4.1 The decline of French in the dissemination of research results

An analysis of scientific dissemination reveals a decline in the use of French in both oral and written communications. This decline is particularly well documented in the case of written communications, where bibliometric indicators attest to the drastic marginalization of French-language publications. This vulnerability is also evident in oral communications, particularly at symposia and conferences, where the use of French is gradually giving way in the name of visibility and internationalization. This underscores the magnitude of the normative challenge shaping the dissemination landscape.

4.1.1 Scientific articles

An analysis of bibliometric trends over the last 40 years confirms the decline of French in scientific publications. It is in the Web of Science—a source widely used in bibliometric research evaluations that indexes the most frequently cited journals across all disciplines—that the decline of French appears most pronounced. While articles in French accounted for 4.6% of the entire database in 1980, that share had fallen to 0.34% by 2024. There has also been a decline in the absolute number of French-language articles being indexed in the Web: from 34,415 per year in 1980 to 14,032 per year in 2024.Footnote 79 In contrast, the share of articles that were in English grew from 83.7% to 97.3% over the same period. Moreover, nearly all documents cited by the articles in the database (upwards of 95%) are in English.Footnote 80

Some sources paint a slightly more nuanced but still alarming picture. Using more inclusive databases—OpenAlex and Dimensions, which aim to index all scientific articles published worldwide—Pradier, Céspedes and LarivièreFootnote 81 have shown that French is the language that has declined the most over the past 35 years, falling from the second most prominent language in terms of scientific articles to fifth place, accounting for approximately 1% of articles in 2023 (tied with German). Although these sources reveal greater multilingualism in science, they show that regardless of the language of the article, nearly all the references cited (more than 98%) are texts published in English.

The case of French is not unique. Almost all languages other than English have declined in scientific publishing. The only exceptions visible in the data are Portuguese and Indonesian, whose growth is due to the strength of their national dissemination platforms but whose symbolic value in international science remains low. Thus, in recent decades, English has effectively become the sole language used for the dissemination of scientific articles in the natural sciences, engineering and health, and it is steadily gaining ground in the social sciences and humanities.Footnote 82 As Larivière and Sugimoto note, in reference to the Web of Science data, whereas English accounted for 83% and 85% of articles in the natural sciences and health in 1980, these figures had risen to 98% and 99%, respectively, by 2015.Footnote 83

During its meetings, the Advisory Panel repeatedly heard that researchers believe publishing in English-language international journals allows them to reach a broader audience, boost the discoverability of their work, obtain more citations, and enhance their reputation and institutional recognition for the purposes of career advancement.

[Translation] The dominance of English-language publishing is not just a symptom of the marginalization of minority languages. It is also a symptom of an academic world that encourages people to focus on global subjects rather than local ones (interview conducted on June 4, 2025).

Because English-language journals are indexed in databases such as the Web of Science and have higher impact factors (or simply because they have an impact factor at all), evaluators now treat publishing in English-language journals as a de facto requirement for career advancement.Footnote 84 As a result, choices regarding knowledge dissemination are largely influenced by research-evaluation practices across disciplines.

[Translation] Impact metrics are biased because the way research in French is indexed does not reflect the full extent of that research. Such metrics rely on databases that are themselves biased; the Web of Science and other databases capture only a very small fraction of the research conducted in French (interview conducted on June 5, 2025).

As part of the consultations, one stakeholder said, “it is unacceptable, in a bilingual country, that the act of scientific publishing—disciplinary norms notwithstanding—should be a political act; it should not be this way.” A number of people we met with explained that publishing in French felt like activism, a choice that could be perceived as detrimental to their careers.

Amano et al. (2023) have shown that it takes longer for scientists who are not native English speakers to read scientific literature published in English and to write and revise their manuscripts. Amano et al. (2021) have also studied the impact of language barriers on nature conservation—for example, the reduced influence of scientific evidence published in English on local decision-making in non-English-speaking countries. This issue was acknowledged by many organizations during the adoption of the Helsinki Initiative, which aims to promote linguistic diversity in research. The dominance of English can even discourage the study of topics involving national or local realities, particularly in Francophone minority settings, as such topics are considered harder to publish in major (read: English-language) international journals and of limited appeal. The limited interest in applied research was also noted by individuals working in colleges, particularly in minority settings.

Source:

  • Amano, T., Ramírez-Castañeda, V., Berdejo-Espinola, V., Mutumi, G. Z., Chowdhury, S., Golivets, M., ... & Szabo, J. K. (2023). The manifold costs of being a non-native English speaker in science. PLOS Biology, 21(7), e3002184.
  • Amano, T., Berdejo-Espinola, V., Christie, A. P., Willott, K., Akasaka, M., Báldi, A., ... & Sutherland, W. J. (2021). Tapping into non-English-language science for the conservation of global biodiversity. PLOS Biology, 19(10)

4.1.2 Conferences

The predominance of English, observed in scientific publications, is also reflected in oral communications. To be sure, departmental and research-centre seminars in French-language universities do make room for French, as do conferences organized by bodies with a linguistic or geographic focus, such as the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (though we have no data sources that would allow us to quantify the scope of this phenomenon or track its evolution over time). Even so, those consulted were unanimous in pointing out that English is playing a greater role in conferences, particularly those with an international dimension.

Most international scientific events prioritize English because it is considered the lingua franca for the exchange of ideas and the dissemination of research results. Even at conferences held in Quebec, English often dominates presentations, posters and associated publications, as organizers seek to maximize audience reach and international visibility. The same phenomenon can be observed at major conferences held in non-English-speaking countries, such as France, and for the same reasons. Most major international scientific organizations use English as their language of communication.

According to a 2021 survey by Acfas, nearly 30% of French-speaking respondents had not given any scientific presentations in French between April 1, 2018, and April 1, 2020. Unsurprisingly, this proportion is higher in the natural sciences (55%). The survey also confirmed the significant disciplinary and institutional divide in the space accorded to French in scientific presentations. Acfas also indicates that organizers of French-language scientific events often struggle to attract French-speaking participants, a situation that is even more problematic in minority settings.Footnote 85

In the Advisory Panel’s view, the dominance of English in national and international scientific conferences poses a threat to the diversity of cultural and scientific perspectives. It undermines the vitality of other languages and the transmission of knowledge to local audiences. For researchers who are not English speakers, this situation poses the added challenge of having to present high-quality scientific content in a language that is not their own. Ramírez-Castañeda further notes that non-English speakers are often required to pay for language support (editing, translation) and may need more time to prepare presentations.Footnote 86 These pressures may even lead some individuals to choose not to participate in conferences.

Canada cannot singlehandedly change the nature of international conferences, but it can influence the situation domestically and work with other countries in the Francophonie to organize international scientific events in French. The Government of Canada can support genuinely bilingual or French-only conferences and events (such as the Ma thèse en 180 secondes [MT180] competition organized by Acfas) by providing dedicated funding.Footnote 87

The Advisory Panel recommends:

  • That the granting agencies increase their financial support for French-language and bilingual conferences, symposia and summer schools, in order to provide French-speaking researchers with the same opportunities as non-Francophones, particularly in Francophone minority settings.

4.2 Supporting Canadian research dissemination infrastructures

In its 2017 report, the Canadian Scholarly Publishing Working Group noted that:

Canada needs a robust and sustainable scholarly publishing system that meets the needs of Canadian researchers. The infrastructure for research dissemination is an essential part of the research environment. Distribution of research needs to be considered as an essential component of the research process, alongside research itself, adding to our store of knowledge, enriching industry, government and the public, and providing the foundation for further knowledge production.Footnote 88

The Advisory Panel, like the vast majority of those consulted, considers increased support for Canadian French-language knowledge-dissemination infrastructures to be a necessary precondition for the changes required to secure the future of French within the research ecosystem. The following subsections detail the various components of this infrastructure, as well as the associated recommendations, with a view to addressing the financial challenge facing the dissemination of knowledge in French.

4.2.1 French-language scholarly journals: a showcase for locally grounded research

French-language scholarly journals help shape research communities by providing a forum for debate and enabling research grounded in local realities—research that does not enjoy visibility in the major international journals. As noted by the Réseau québécois de recherche et de mutualisation pour les revues scientifiques (CIRCÉ), French-language and bilingual journals build bridges between national scientific communities and enhance the international visibility of French-speaking researchers. They are key to scientific exchange and represent one of the primary vehicles for scientific prestige. Footnote 89

Canada has nearly 950 active scholarly journals, most of them in the social sciences and humanities.Footnote 90 In these fields, the share of journals that are in French has held steady at about 10% for several decades now; however, across all fields, French-language journals have lost ground, now accounting for only about 3% of active journals. Even though they once made up the lion’s share of journals in Canada, bilingual journals—primarily managed by Canadian learned societies—are also in decline. That decline has been steady in the natural sciences (including engineering) and medical sciences since the 1970s and in the social sciences and humanities since the 1990s. In bilingual journals, the share of articles published in French has generally been declining as well.Footnote 91

These data align with global trends. The vast majority of new journals are created in English—nearly 70% between 2010 and 2016.Footnote 92 The situation in Canada is comparable: of all new journals created since the 1960s, French-language and bilingual journals account for only 8% and 17%, respectively. Without these French-language and bilingual journals, access to new knowledge specific to the realities of Quebec and Canada would be severely compromised.Footnote 93

Most French-language scholarly journals in Canada are hosted on the Érudit dissemination platform, which was created at the Université de Montréal in the late 1990s. This platform includes nearly 300 journals, primarily in the social sciences and humanities.

With most journals in Canada publishing exclusively or overwhelmingly in English, French-language and bilingual journals play a strategic role in promoting and protecting our linguistic and cultural diversity. They provide an invaluable forum for those who wish to publish in French and to showcase their work to their peers and the Canadian public. According to the brief submitted by CIRCÉ, the approximately 180 French-language scholarly journals in Quebec and Canada appear as levers for knowledge mobilization, as they make it possible to conduct research that is relevant at the local level and to access research-based knowledge equitably in a diversity of languages both within and outside academia. Students, as well as early-career researchers, can also benefit from these tools to gain publishing experience in their own language, thereby strengthening their writing skills.

Relevant initiatives

On October 7, 2025, the Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ) announced an investment of $600,000 over four years to support the creation of four new Francophone scholarly journals in the areas of intersectoral initiatives, health sciences, and science and engineering.

On that occasion, Quebec’s Chief Scientist, Rémi Quirion, noted that the establishment of those four journals was another step toward strengthening science in French, particularly in sectors where that language remained underused.

As a number of participants noted during the Advisory Panel’s consultations, the small number and limited diversity of scholarly journals publishing in French make it impossible to cover all disciplines and meet the needs of the entire international Francophone research community. Although there are nearly 300 Canadian journals in the fields of engineering and the natural and medical sciences, few are published in French.Footnote 94 The limited number of French-language journals in these fields increases reliance on foreign, commercial publishers, thereby undermining efforts to achieve Canadian scientific sovereignty.Footnote 95 As CIRCÉ states in its brief:

[Translation] […] supporting Canadian and Quebec scholarly journals in French means fostering genuine scientific sovereignty at a time when Canada is handing over most of its scientific-knowledge production and dissemination capacity to large commercial and transnational publishers. These publishers tend to promote English as the language of knowledge dissemination and impose their private interests on the directions and priorities of publicly funded research in Canada, all while deriving exorbitant profits from public investment.

The data show that the majority of articles written by Canadian researchers, regardless of their field, are published in foreign journals. Approximately 10% are published in Canadian journals, with a higher proportion in the social sciences and humanities (just under 20%).Footnote 96 Moreover, journals published outside Canada are largely owned by commercial interests (Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, etc.),Footnote 97 a situation similar to that of other countries in North America and Europe but distinct from that of South America, where regional and Ibero-American dissemination networks play a significant role.Footnote 98

The loss of prestige of French not only affects the choice of publication language, but—according to the CIRCÉ network—also exacerbates the many challenges currently faced by scholarly journal teams, particularly recruitment of reviewers for articles and succession planning in editorial leadership. Footnote 99 CIRCÉ is of the view that, to succeed, French-language journals need to innovate and go beyond English-language models. But above all, they need to be better supported.

Historically, scholarly journals in Canada were supported by universities. Over time, this support was replaced—both financially and symbolically—by direct government investments, but these investments declined in the 1990s, placing journals in a precarious situation. Many French-language and bilingual journals have since ceased publication or transitioned to English. The former National Research Council of Canada Press had a bilingual mandate but lost its language obligations when it was privatized in 2010 (becoming Canadian Science Publishing [CSP]). For more than 15 years now, CSP has published 27 journals and promoted research in more than 175 countries—but exclusively in English.

Canadian journals do receive some government support, notably through SSHRC’s Aid to Scholarly Journals program (up to $52,000 per year over a three-year period). In Quebec, they can also benefit from the Soutien aux revues scientifiques en français program administered by the FRQ ($25,000 per year over four years). Quebec journals therefore enjoy a significant advantage over journals in Francophone minority settings, as they can obtain support from two granting agencies.

In minority settings, rare are the journals that receive funding from SSHRC. What is more, NSERC and CIHR provide no support to scholarly journals at all, let alone dissemination platforms. This partly explains why many individuals publishing in the natural and medical sciences told us that there were no good French-language or bilingual journals in their fields.

[Translation] In our case, the journal is enshrined in the collective agreement. As a result, the roles of journal editor and secretary are supported through institutional course release; to my knowledge, this is quite exceptional within the field. Thanks to that, there was this sense that the journal would be able to stand on its own. Of course, scholarly publishing has evolved since then […]; it is no longer simply a matter of having two professors edit the manuscripts, have them peer-reviewed and publish them. There is a very substantial workload involved, which means that, for us, the most pressing needs relate to funding […]. These needs involve the logistical support required to run the journal—having competent coordinators in place who can receive submissions and understand the peer-review process […]. SSHRC is the organization best positioned to support us in that mission, but I’ve noticed that they ask about the number of hits the journal receives. I don’t know whether French-language and English-language journals are assessed in competition with one another, but there is no way we will ever be able to compete with journals written in the universal lingua franca—English (interview conducted on October 6, 2025).

Lastly, university libraries represent an important source of support for the research dissemination ecosystem: collectively, they invest approximately $400 million annually in subscriptions and related services. However, the vast majority of these funds are paid to foreign commercial publishers. Libraries also invest in the open-access dissemination of national journals, mainly through the Partnership for Open Access (POA), which provides financial support to non-commercial Canadian scholarly journals. Although these journals are not always in French, French-language journals are less likely to be owned by large commercial publishers,Footnote 100 as they are less attractive financially.

A number of the people we consulted expressed appreciation for the increase to the annual budget of SSHRC’s Aid to Scholarly Journals program from $3.3 million to $7.6 million for the 2025–2028 funding cycle. Nevertheless, according to the brief submitted by CIRCÉ, this amount still represents only a very small percentage of the total funding available annually for research and does not even begin to reflect the central role that scholarly journals play in the research cycle.

The Advisory Panel recommends three positive measures:

  • That SSHRC’s Aid to Scholarly Journals program be enhanced in order to support a greater number of French-language and bilingual scholarly journals (with at least 30% of articles to be published in FrenchFootnote 101), particularly in minority settings. (These grants should be increased to account for rising costs and disbursed over a five-year period instead of a three-year period in order to reduce administrative burden).
  • That SSHRC include, among the program’s conditions, a requirement that all journals funded through its Aid to Scholarly Journals program produce abstracts in both of Canada’s official languages.
  • That NSERC and CIHR incorporate support for scholarly journals and Canadian dissemination platforms into their funding programs.

4.2.2 Scholarly books: an important vehicle for the humanities

While scientific articles have become the dominant format in a global context where the pressure to publish more is intense, scholarly books are sometimes better suited to researchers’ needs. Such books remain an invaluable and targeted tool, a knowledge technology that makes a significant contribution to knowledge dissemination and instruction. In certain humanities disciplines (art, history, philosophy, linguistics, literature, religion), scholarly books are the central vehicle, more important than scientific articles.Footnote 102

However, the scholarly book, as a format, is also going through a period of uncertainty not unrelated to the development of the Web and the digital shift of the past 25 years. On the one hand, it is the poor cousin of the journal article in terms of support for research publishing. On the other hand, it is at a complex stage where new economic models, technical standards and forms of scholarly communication are needed.Footnote 103

Scholarly books rely primarily on two types of publishers: university presses and private publishers. While the vast majority of Canadian scholarly books written in English are published by university presses, those written in French are published by a more diverse range of outlets, including small private publishers such as Boréal and Nota Bene, as well as Éditions David, L’Interligne, Éditions Perce-Neige, and Prise de parole. Although their funding models differ, they must all contend with the fact that scholarly books rarely generate sufficient revenue to cover their production costs.

University presses often operate under hybrid funding models based on revenue sources such as institutional support, sales, author contributions, reproduction rights and grants. The Association of Canadian University Presses (ACUP) has 18 members: 3 bilingual presses, 4 French-language presses (one of which operates in a minority setting), and 11 English-language presses. The financial support they receive from their host institutions varies from one press to another. Such support is crucial, as revenues from scholarly books are far lower than those from works of fiction.

Canadian university presses have several sources of grants, the three main ones being the Canada Council for the Arts (CCA), the Canada Book Fund and the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program (ASPP) of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (FHSS).Footnote 104 However, since its 2016–2017 reform, the CCA has effectively excluded support for the publication of so-called academic and scientific works from its funding programs (including its translation program). Whereas historically the CCA also had a mandate to support “essays and studies,” the organization now funds only “literary creation.” University presses that benefited from these programs prior to 2016–2017 have remained eligible. However, their funding has effectively been “frozen.” Moreover, no other university press has been supported by the CCA unless it publishes works of creative writing or literary essays. Lastly, any essay that might be deemed sufficiently “literary” to be eligible for CCA funding (including its translation program) becomes de facto ineligible if it receives funding from the ASPP (or SSHRC).

The Canada Book Fund modelFootnote 105 is based on domestic and export sales. As a result, the most financially successful university presses are those that benefit the most from this program. However, the eligibility criteria exclude small university presses (e.g. Presses universitaires de Saint-Boniface), as their annual publishing output and sales revenues are deemed insufficient.

The FHSS’s ASPP is the only other pan-Canadian source of funding. Founded in 1941, the program has contributed to the publication of over 8,000 titles, supporting original research shaping Canada’s intellectual and cultural landscape.Footnote 106 Each year, the FHSS distributes an average of 180 publication grants of $8,000 per title. It goes without saying that this program is unanimously regarded as indispensable, even vital, by all Canadian university presses. At the same time, it is widely considered insufficient by recipients: as explained above, the ASPP basic grant has not been increased since 2006.

Lobet and Larivière had noted that over the 2005–2020 period, French-language books accounted for 13.5% of titles published with ASPP support, whereas this figure should exceed 20% to align with the current language distribution across Canada and Canadian universities.Footnote 107 However, according to the data from the ASPP annual reports available on the FHSS website, this proportion increased markedly between 2020 and 2024, reaching 20% over the past five years.

To address these various challenges, the Advisory Panel proposes three measures:

  • That SSHRC increase funding to FHSS’s ASPP so that the number of ASPP basic grants rises from 180 to 200 per year and their value increases from $8,000 to $12,000, reflecting inflation since 2006.
  • That two ASPP grants be reserved annually for French-language or bilingual university presses operating in minority settings.
  • That the proportion of ASPP grants adequately reflect Canada’s two official languages.

4.2.3 Discoverability of knowledge: the essential role of platforms

Discoverability refers to the ability of an article or book to be identified quickly and efficiently by search engines, databases and bibliographic monitoring systems. The concise definition provided by the Mission franco-québécoise sur la découvrabilité des contenus culturels is particularly useful: [Translation] “The discoverability of content in the digital environment refers to its online availability and its identifiability within the vast array of other content by someone who was not specifically searching for it.”Footnote 108 Without appropriate, multilingual metadata (titles, abstracts, keywords), an article risks having poor algorithmic visibility.

As a result, scientific literature published in French (or in any language other than English) suffers from a discoverability deficit relative to literature published in English. Given that the major international databases primarily index literature in English,Footnote 109 the prestige associated with that language contributes to the marginalization of French-language literature. Indeed, results published in French lose much of their impact if the current digital tools do not allow them to be properly identified and appropriately valued, and science is deprived of relevant knowledge published in other languages.

The discoverability of scientific articles, theses and monographs published in French must therefore be enhanced so that they enjoy full visibility and accessibility, and receive due recognition. To this end, the Advisory Panel is of the view that systematic indexing of French-language journals in major international databases must be supported and funding provided for Canadian infrastructures.

Here, the visibility of French as a language for disseminating knowledge depends heavily on public infrastructures such as Érudit, which provide Canadian journals with the tools and expertise needed to ensure their discoverability while increasing their accessibility. Érudit is the most important journal dissemination platform in Canada, irrespective of language. It is supported as a major scientific initiative by the CFI (the only of its kind in the social sciences and humanities), SSHRC, the FRQ and a number of university libraries across Canada. Despite this support, its funding represents only a small share of the budgets allocated to international and commercial platforms, making this pillar of the ecosystem highly vulnerable even though it plays an essential role in disseminating knowledge in French.

Érudit has developed a digital production chain tailored to French-language journals in the social sciences and humanities (SSH), and supporting these infrastructures is essential to increasing the visibility of research in French within the Francophonie and the global scientific ecosystem.

Relevant initiatives

The Fonds de recherche du Québec has established a Quebec research chair on the discoverability of scientific content in French. The chair’s work will involve creating a conceptual framework for the notion of “discoverability” in a Francophone scientific context, identifying the factors influencing the use of French in science and, in a spirit of pragmatism, proposing concrete approaches to increasing the discoverability of scientific content in French.

4.3 Open access and the translation of scholarly texts: opportunities and challenges

Open access is a double-edged sword for research in French: while it increases the visibility of French-language scholarship, it profoundly destabilizes the economic model of journals and university presses by depriving them of subscription revenues. It therefore represents a major organizational challenge for the entire French-speaking scientific community. The transition towards open science—particularly critical for publications in minority settings—needs to be about more than just free-of-charge access: it requires strengthening digital infrastructures to ensure the indexing of scholarly books and the strategic integration of translation—assisted by artificial intelligence—in order to break linguistic isolation and ensure the international visibility of knowledge produced in French.

4.3.1 Open access

Open access to scholarly documents has been a feature of the scientific landscape for more than three decades. Initially developed by physicists and mathematicians in the early 1990s, open access expanded to other fields under the impetus of the Budapest Open Access Initiative.Footnote 110 Without question, open access contributes to the discoverability and accessibility of research results, and French-language journals, given their dissemination through the Érudit platform, are far more likely to be disseminated via open access than journals that publish in English.Footnote 111 In Canada, the federal and Quebec granting agencies have numerous policies requiring the researchers they fund to disseminate their work via open access. However, these policies are not very effective,Footnote 112 and the policy of all three federal agencies was under review as of this writing.

The shift to open access poses particular challenges for French-language journals. Although in many cases they are funded by the federal and Quebec governments through SSHRC and the FRQ, they also benefit from subscription revenues, which are ultimately expected to disappear with the transition to open access (particularly in the form of diamond open accessFootnote 113). As a result, most journals run on limited resources and struggle to absorb the high costs of author-fee-free publishing, particularly in minority settings, where they receive little SSHRC funding. These financial pressures weaken journals and risk impoverishing the French-language publishing ecosystem.

Adapted public-funding models are becoming essential to preventing the disappearance of French-language journals and preserving linguistic diversity within the research ecosystem. At present, the Partnership for Open Access (POA), created by Érudit in collaboration with the Canadian Research Knowledge Network, provides financial support to approximately 260 Canadian scholarly journals through the engagement of more than 90 university libraries in Canada and worldwide. On average, journals that have transitioned to open access (mostly diamond open access) receive $4,000 annually through this initiative. This amount is insufficient to offset the revenue losses resulting from the disappearance of subscriptions. Universities are required to compensate for this by continuing to support journals, but this is far from a panacea, especially in minority settings, where institutions are working with limited funding.

As for Canadian French-language scholarly books, they too face accessibility challenges. Whether in print or digital form, a poorly indexed book will be much less “discoverable.” In addition to the traditional dissemination channels ensuring accessibility, books must also be able to rely on the discoverability that comes with a well-indexed presence across Web search engines. Unlike French-language scholarly journals, Canadian French-language scholarly books are still too difficult to discover and access on the Web. To disseminate these books at the national level, university presses, like all other publishers, rely solely on the De Marque digital repository.Footnote 114 For international dissemination, titles from Canadian French-language university presses rely on French-language scholarly dissemination platforms such as Cairn and OpenEdition, U.S. platforms such as JSTOR and Project Muse, or transnational infrastructures such as Google Scholar and OpenAlex.

Current dissemination and distribution models are still designed in accordance with the commercial standards of general publishing rather than international scientific standards. They rely on standards that are not necessarily those favoured in scholarly publishing (persistent identifiers, metadata, discovery tools), which considerably limits the discoverability of Quebec [and Canadian French-language] scholarly books in academic research environments. This calls for improved dissemination of French-language scholarly books and full integration of those books into international research networks.

The lack of sustainable funding prevents the Érudit platform from offering such services to university presses and scholarly book publishers. Érudit estimates that approximately $1 million would be required for initial development and $500,000 per year for ongoing maintenance and innovation.Footnote 115 Developing this new service offering on Érudit would provide an opportunity to introduce parallel measures to integrate artificial intelligence and support the open-access publication of a greater number of scholarly books (including, potentially, textbooks). Naturally, this would entail a complex—and potentially delicate—cultural shift for the scholarly publishing community.

Initiatives do exist to support open access to scholarly books. Since 2023, the FHSS has added 27 grants of $8,000 Canadian each for open-access books and 27 grants of $2,000 Canadian each for open-access chapters. This program is regarded as essential by all Canadian university presses but is considered largely inadequate by its beneficiaries. Moreover, the financial impacts of open access on press revenues remain poorly understood, and there are no reliable data with which to quantify the resources required to establish an open-access scholarly book dissemination ecosystem.

The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada, through the RFSPF, increase support for dissemination infrastructures and digital platforms through four positive measures:

  • That CFI Provide greater support for the Érudit platform, including for metadata updates.
  • That SSHRC fund the transition to diamond open access with no embargo for the scholarly journals it supports through the Aid to Scholarly Journals program.
  • That SSHRC, through the FHSS, enhance its open-access publishing support program by increasing the number of annual grants from 27 to 45 for both books and chapters, and by adjusting the amounts to reflect inflation.
  • That Canadian Heritage fund a study on the challenges of open access for scholarly books in order to establish an evidence-based strategy.

4.3.2 Translation and artificial intelligence

For French to take its rightful place in the Canadian scientific landscape, articles published in that language need to be not only discoverable but also readable, both by French-speaking researchers and by other individuals who do not speak French. Stakeholders noted that machine translation has the potential to reduce the language barriers limiting access to publications and thereby broaden the reach of research findings published in French. While the quality of machine translation is not yet optimal, it is improving, allowing for a more seamless circulation of ideas. It offers speed and accessibility, making it a key enabler of equity, visibility of local research and global scientific dialogue.Footnote 116

There is every reason to believe that advances in machine translation will soon make it possible to provide access in English to scientific articles written in French and other languages. That said, training an AI tool in a specific field requires large volumes of data. Priority must therefore be given to creating specialized corpora and developing a precise lexicon that keeps pace with scientific advances. At the same time, authors will need to familiarize themselves with AI tools in the course of their work, in particular with the requirement that their writing be easily translatable.

During its consultations, the Advisory Panel regularly heard that Canada would benefit from developing a public, free-of-charge English-French machine translation tool. Such a service would be particularly useful for ensuring access to the results of research conducted in Canada in both official languages. More broadly, it would enable the scientific community to disseminate its work to a wider audience, both domestically and internationally, without language barriers. Students could more easily consult essential resources in their preferred language, and the general public would benefit from improved access to scientific discoveries and debates. This initiative would reduce inequalities in access to knowledge, strengthen bilingualism, and promote more equitable and inclusive dissemination of scientific information.

The Advisory Panel recommends:

  • That the CFI support the development and hosting, in Canada, of a public platform dedicated to the archiving and machine translation of scientific texts—for example, texts produced by researchers working within the Government of Canada—drawing on corpora in English and French, and other languages, where relevant.
  • That the NRC, together with other AI actors in Canada, boost support for language technologies, particularly artificial intelligence as applied to scientific translation.

4.3.3 Translation of scholarly books

In Canada, there is little support for the translation of scholarly books, apart from the five grants offered by the ASPP. Even that program was underused until very recently due to the low level of funding provided for translation ($12,000 Canadian), which does not cover the full cost of translating a scholarly work.

Since 2023, the FHSS has significantly enhanced its ASPP – Translation program. It now offers five grants of $30,000 Canadian annually, one of which is dedicated to translations into Indigenous languages. Despite this effort, the Advisory Panel is of the view that the program is insufficient to meet the needs of Canadian university presses, a point underscored by members of the Association of Canadian University Presses (ACUP) during the consultations, who called for the creation of a National Translation Program with an annual envelope sufficient to fund the translation of 20 scholarly books, at a rate of $30,000 Canadian per grant. As the University of Ottawa Presses made clear to the Advisory Panel, [Translation] “it seems inconceivable to us that, in a bilingual country with a knowledge-based economy, the translation of scholarly books should be limited to five titles per year. We see this as a major barrier to the visibility of French-speaking researchers and scholarly publishers operating outside Quebec.”Footnote 117

Members of the ACUP also criticized the 2016–2017 CCA reform for excluding scholarly books from the Arts Abroad program’s International Translation component. In their view, this failure to give Canadian university presses what they need to compete with other countries on the world stage is inconsistent with Canada’s bilingual identity.

The Advisory Panel recommends

  • That Canadian Heritage fund a national scholarly book translation program that would award up to 20 grants of $30,000 per year for the translation of scholarly books into English or French, and 10 grants of $30,000 to support translation into other languages.

Chapter 4 Conclusion

In this chapter, we have highlighted the critical importance of strengthening research dissemination mechanisms and improving the visibility of research in French in Canada, given the dominance of English in Canadian and international science. The data documenting the decline of French in scientific publishing, the vulnerability of the dedicated infrastructures and ongoing discoverability challenges illustrate a context in which French-language dissemination is being rendered invisible. Reversing this trend will require a strategic and robust approach that combines increased support for journals, books, conferences, and popularization initiatives with the development of high-performance, secure digital infrastructures, such as Érudit.

The dissemination of scientific knowledge also relies on investments in machine translation, metadata quality, and the implementation of tailored funding programs for publications and translations. Implementing these recommendations would not only help preserve the linguistic diversity of Canadian research and strengthen the legitimacy of scientific dissemination in French but would also foster greater participation by Canada and enhance its influence within the international research ecosystem. In sum, a coordinated and sustainable strategy is required for the Canadian scientific Francophonie to regain its vitality and its place in the international dissemination of knowledge. Such a strategy would serve to address the three challenges—normative, financial, and organizational—identified at the beginning of this chapter.

Chapter 5: Promoting scientific knowledge in French and scientific knowledge on the Francophonie

The social value of science and knowledge is demonstrated when research results are translated into public policy, services, innovations or professional practices. Whether it be the most recent studies on cancer treatment, the most notable advances in materials physics or the most in-depth reflections on the organization of our societies, the ideas that change the world are those that are put forward, adopted and put into practice. This presupposes the active and collaborative mobilization of knowledge and multiple knowledge-transfer activities, including syntheses, guides, decision-support tools, mediation and popularization. Accessibility, however, is not solely a technical issue; it also has a linguistic dimension.

For knowledge to be fully taken up by the individuals and communities concerned, it must also be possible for that knowledge to be co-constructed and discussed in their first official language. In a country such as Canada, when such supports are available only in English, there is a risk of unequal access to information and slower uptake of best practices.

Knowledge mobilization, including knowledge transfer in French, is also a matter of democracy. On the one hand, the participatory approach inherent in knowledge mobilization, grounded in the notion of co-construction, serves to integrate the tacit knowledge of practice settings with research-based evidence. On the other hand, it enables the people working in such settings to participate fully in the production of knowledge. This mode of knowledge production can highlight specificities that are often overlooked in the development of programs and services. In this way, democracy is strengthened.

Knowledge-transfer activities are also essential to understanding collective choices, for example with respect to vaccination, climate change, or emerging technologies. They contribute to the exercise of critical judgment and to the vitality of public debate. In sum, knowledge mobilization and transfer deserve to be valued, as they are essential tools for maintaining a relationship of trust between citizens and their governments.

This chapter addresses the fourth and final quadrant of our typology: the promotion of scientific knowledge in French. It shows how the three major challenges—normative, financial and organizational—play out in the area of knowledge promotion.

This chapter examines how these three systemic challenges hinder the promotion of scientific knowledge in French and proposes measures to address those challenges. By actively supporting knowledge mobilization at the local level and promoting research in French in international science, the Government of Canada is doing more than merely meeting its language obligations: it is strengthening the country’s scientific culture, combating disinformation and ensuring Canada’s international visibility as a global leader in multilingual science.

5.1 Recognizing knowledge mobilization in French

Knowledge mobilization is a dynamic process that seeks to enhance the social utility of science. It often involves a shift in mindset from one-way knowledge dissemination to a collaborative, partnership-based approach.Footnote 118 In Quebec, the first group to focus on knowledge mobilization was the RENARD research team, beginning in 2009.Footnote 119 In 2013, TIESS—Territoires innovants en économie sociale et solidaire—in the social-economy sector became a leader in the area of knowledge transfer.Footnote 120 At the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), there are two academic programs dedicated to knowledge mobilization.Footnote 121 The FRQ, for its part, funds a citizen-engagement program aimed at fostering scientific projects led by civil-society actors.Footnote 122

Increasingly, universities are tending to prioritize knowledge mobilization, understood primarily in terms of knowledge transfer, by establishing services designed to increase the visibility of their researchers’ work. Often housed within offices of vice-presidents for research, knowledge-transfer activities provide a means of showcasing expertise and demonstrating the impact of research on society.Footnote 123

The consultations also revealed that researchers, including those working in colleges, are fully committed to advancing knowledge mobilization, as well as collaborative and partnership-based forms of research. They work regularly with community organizations specializing in a wide range of sectors—social economy, health, violence against women—in order to co-construct scientific knowledge in French that is useful for shaping public policy, as well as for improving or assessing practices across different practice settings. In this way, knowledge mobilization, including in minority settings, gives rise to grounded knowledge that contributes to social development.Footnote 124

[Translation] Where I think we could have a major impact is in the whole area of knowledge mobilization and transfer. I think that’s where we have the most to gain as a Francophone community (…) I believe in a knowledge mobilization approach that is more focused on co-construction—that is, working in partnership to build the research itself, in a way that aligns with the skills, capacities, and, of course, the will of the communities involved (interview conducted on May 28, 2025)

5.1.1 The normative challenge

Despite its importance as a way of approaching knowledge production, researchers are often hesitant to commit fully to knowledge mobilization, constrained by a lack of time, resources or training, and by concerns about being misquoted or penalized in career advancement processes that traditionally prioritize conventional scientific publishing—often in English—over community engagement. Funding opportunities are also fewer or less well known, due to the absence of a Canadian knowledge-mobilization program comparable to those that exist elsewhere in the world. Here too, the main challenges identified in the first chapter—normative, financial, and organizational—are entirely relevant in understanding the marginalization of this particular type of research aimed at fostering collaborative and partnership-based co-construction of knowledge.

A 2022 survey of more than 400 researchers on the social responsibility of the research community showed that a majority considered knowledge-mobilization activities to be part of their responsibilities as scientists. A total of 92% felt they had a social duty tied to their research activities.

However, among the reasons cited for not becoming involved, lack of time ranked first for 71.5% of respondents. Although knowledge-mobilization activities were generally viewed positively by colleagues, supervisors or the institutions themselves, they were far less valued for evaluation purposes (44%).Footnote 125

These results partially echo what we heard during our consultations, where a number of individuals pointed to the lack of consideration they received when submitting funding applications for knowledge-mobilization or partnership-based research.

[Translation] I constantly find myself straddling my work as a researcher—which puts food on the table—and my community involvement […] But, as you all know, within the university system, this sort of approach aimed at meeting community needs is not necessarily valued. For me, it felt somewhat absurd to be working in a Francophone minority community without being aligned with what the organizations and individuals there were actually seeking […] Working at Campus Saint-Jean and being involved for a time in community engagement, you end up in a kind of “no man’s land” but also a “be-everything-to-everyone-all-the-time man’s land.” So when I want to do my research on the vitality of French in Western Canada, I run up against questions from my colleagues about the legitimacy of doing that sort of work. “Yes, but that’s community-based work. That’s too community-based; it’s not serious enough,” and so on. And on the other side, there is the challenge of making what I consider to be valid research accessible to the community. In recent years in particular, I’ve taken the second option and increasingly turned to publications, to make my research more accessible, while scaling back the heavy burden of communications, conferences and popularization activities across multiple media (interview conducted on March 3, 2025).

In Canada, there is no federal inter-agency program dedicated to knowledge mobilization comparable to those that exist elsewhere in the world, such as the PICRI project in France or, in Quebec, the FRQ’s ENGAGE program.

Case study: the PICRI mechanism

Launched in the early 2000s by the Île-de-France Region, the Partnerships Between Institutions and Citizens for Research and Innovation (PICRI) program represented a major innovation in participatory research funding. Unlike traditional industry-oriented technology-transfer models, PICRI seeks to institutionalize the “third sector of science.”

The originality of the mechanism lies in its eligibility requirement: each project must be jointly led by an academic research laboratory and a not-for-profit civil-society organization (association, union, NGO). This is not popularization (from expert to citizen) but co-production: the research question is defined jointly to address a social need unmet by the market.

In addition to being multidisciplinary, the model is recognized for its greater simplicity and accessibility.

The three granting agencies do have initiatives in place. SSHRC, for example, offers Connection Grants, which encourage knowledge mobilization among diverse audiences. NSERC, for its part, provides flexible funding to Canadian colleges, enabling them to acquire the resources needed to support applied-research priorities identified by organizations in the private, public or not-for-profit sectors, or by health-sector organizations within their communities. For its part, CIHR has recently funded the FORCES-Santé network, which includes a collaborative research and knowledge-dissemination portal focused on Francophones in minority settings.

Though valuable, these initiatives do not make up for the absence of a sustained strategy for knowledge mobilization within the granting agencies. In the short term, these initiatives could be further developed and emulated with appropriate, strategic support from the Government of Canada.

5.1.2 Three measures to support knowledge mobilization in French

Meeting these challenges will require action on funding, academic recognition, and visibility to the public and communities. For this reason, the Advisory Panel recommends supporting knowledge-mobilization activities, including projects involving knowledge brokerage platforms that foster closer ties among communities of practice.

As the case of PICRI illustrates, such third spaces are essential to translating the needs of practice settings into research questions and, conversely, for making results accessible and fostering public buy-in. The Advisory Panel also encourages French-language researchers to expand and enrich online content, a step that would increase the visibility of their research and contribute more fully to the democratization of knowledge. As part of Action Plan for Official Languages 2023–2028, the Government of Canada created the Scientific Knowledge in French Support Fund. This fund is a way to support knowledge-mobilization projects submitted by not-for-profit organizations and post-secondary institutions. The Advisory Panel is of the view that this fund should be made permanent and repositioned within the RFSPF.

In addition, to encourage researchers to become more involved, it is essential to give greater consideration to knowledge mobilization in grant applications and review committees. Social engagement and the transfer of knowledge to the public must be recognized as major scientific contributions in their own right.

Lastly, to address the isolation of organizations, the Committee recommends increasing support for partnership-based research and better publicizing funding opportunities for organizations. A targeted communications strategy is also recommended to inform interested stakeholders that funds exist to support their collaboration with the academic community.

The Advisory Panel recommends to the Government of Canada:

  • That the Scientific Knowledge in French Support Fund be made permanent and be repositioned within the RFSPF.
  • That the granting agencies adopt strategies and programs to strengthen support for partnership-based research and its visibility.
  • That the granting agencies assign greater weight to knowledge mobilization in evaluating researchers.

5.2 From knowledge transfer to scientific popularization in French: addressing the funding gaps

Knowledge-transfer activities play an essential role in democratic life. Scientific popularization, for its part, is another way of making knowledge derived from partnership-based and other forms of research accessible to a wide range of audiences. It translates complex concepts published in scholarly journals into clear, vivid, accessible language, while preserving the essence.

Scientific popularization offers several benefits. As noted by the CIRCÉ Network, popularization helps educate and raise awareness by stoking curiosity and promoting scientific culture, thereby enabling the public to access knowledge or actively participate in societal debates related to science.Footnote 126 Popularization also sheds light on major societal issues, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, disease outbreaks, conflicts, artificial intelligence, and linguistic and cultural diversity. Lastly, it helps strengthen public trust in research.

In Canada, a wide range of actors work in the area of scientific popularization. Media—particularly television and radio networks, newspapers and digital platforms—play a major role in conveying and explaining research findings, thereby helping to counter disinformation.Footnote 127 Researchers themselves also contribute through public lectures, blogs, videos and appearances in media or on their own websites.

Scientific and community-based organizations also organize symposia, webinars and science-popularization competitions, and produce publications aimed at the general public. Community organizations and science-culture institutions—such as museums, aquariums and planetariums—offer workshops, exhibitions and interactive programs. Many not-for-profit organizations dedicated to scientific and environmental issues—such as the David Suzuki Foundation, the Canadian Wildlife Federation and Let’s Talk Science—also engage in scientific popularization. Lastly, educational institutions and libraries contribute to the creation and dissemination of instructional and scientific materials tailored to non-specialists.

Some of the world’s leading publishers and scientific platforms, in addition to disseminating research findings, also develop initiatives to promote and popularize those findings. They produce podcasts, interview series, thematic features and interactive multimedia content designed to present scientific work in an accessible and engaging manner.Footnote 128

These approaches enhance the visibility of researchers and their discoveries, foster public engagement with science, and help promote careers in science. Unfortunately, most of this content is typically produced in English, which limits its impact among French-speaking audiences and limits the dissemination of science in French in Canada.

5.2.1 Knowledge popularization: Emerging challenges and promising initiatives

There is not enough data to support an in-depth discussion of the availability of popularized scientific content in French; however, experts agree that English-language content is ubiquitous across platforms.Footnote 129 This finding holds true across all digital platforms, from the science channels on YouTube to the science podcasts available on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Moreover, owing to the predominance of English in scholarly communications (Chapter 4), popularization or synthesis articles—even when they are in French—largely refer to studies published in English. During the consultations, we heard that the scientific advice provided to governments was based on systematic literature reviews that relied excessively on research published in English, introducing a major bias in that recommendations for action and public policy do not take research conducted in Francophone contexts into account.

To illustrate the dangers of French-language popularization or knowledge synthesis grounded primarily in English-language literature, one participant cited the example of medicine, where excluding studies published in Mandarin skewed the findings on treatment effectiveness. The lack of French-language knowledge syntheses hampers scientific popularization. This is another factor that contributes to the marginalization of research in French.

What is more, the consultations revealed a lack of qualified French-speaking scientists in media. Media outlets often appear to favour English-speaking experts, whose remarks are then translated during interviews. In the Advisory Panel’s view, seeing and hearing French-speaking scientists is crucial to inspiring and training the next generation.

Relevant initiative

The three main federal granting agencies support scientific popularization through a range of funding programs. SSHRC has launched a program called “The Storytellers.” NSERC administers the PromoScience program, which funds educational initiatives designed to promote science and engineering among young Canadians. CIHR’s Planning and Dissemination Grants support knowledge planning and dissemination activities in the field of health, such as workshops and events, in order to foster an understanding of health research among knowledge users and members of the public.

Despite these initiatives, the Canadian population has limited access to research findings produced through public funding, notably because of language barriers. The Advisory Panel is of the view that research conducted in Canada should be fully available to the general public, in simplified form and in both official languages. This would make that research more accessible to Canadians, decision-makers and media alike.

However, the major challenge lies in the increasingly tenuous relationship between science and the public, exacerbated by a polarized media environment. This crisis is fuelled by the difficulty of navigating uncertainty and by disinformation, particularly in social media. From the perspective of knowledge producers, another persistent barrier is researchers’ reluctance to engage in scientific popularization due to a lack of time or training, as well as fears of being misquoted. The absence of systematic training in science mediation often leaves experts ill-equipped to deal with media.

[Translation] For me, the national issue is that there is a crisis of trust in expertise more broadly. There are many Canadians whose first language or language of daily use is French. We need to reach them and build and maintain trust in scientific expertise (interview conducted on June 3, 2025).

5.2.2 Positive measures

Ensuring a scientifically informed citizenry requires fostering access to the results of publicly funded research. Scientific popularization should be not just an option but an institutional standard. This entails supporting not only translation but also tailored popularization, thereby transforming academic research into a public good that is readily usable by civil society and by science journalists.

The Advisory Panel is of the view that research conducted in Canada should be fully available to the general public, in simplified form and in both official languages. This would make that research more accessible to Canadians, decision-makers and media alike.

The Advisory Panel recommends:

  • That Library and Archives Canada create a national repository of plain-language summaries, in both official languages, of all articles that are the product of research funded by the Government of Canada.
  • That the granting agencies establish a research program to support projects involving scientific popularization in media.

5.3 Promoting French-language scientific content worldwide

French-language research in Canada does not operate in a vacuum. Promoting French-language research networks also means making a strategic investment in positioning Canada’s research ecosystem within the international Francophonie in order to consolidate its influence. Moreover, over 60% of the scholarly outputs to which Canadian researchers contribute are the result of collaborations with international partners,Footnote 130 even though a large proportion are written in English.

I believe that the Government of Canada should make provision for science-diplomacy programs in French… and, through this overarching approach, explicitly own its role in supporting post-secondary institutions (interview conducted on May 26, 2025).

Promising internationally oriented initiatives in recent years include numerous initiatives funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ) to enhance the discoverability of French-language scientific content, including the CIRCÉ network, as well as the Réseau francophone international en conseil scientifique and the network of chairs in science diplomacy that it created in the fall of 2025. These key initiatives have taken the form of numerous activities promoting research in French, as well as the development of a France–Quebec strategy aimed at promoting the discoverability of scientific and cultural content in French.

SSHRC funds research and graduate training in such areas as linguistics, education and cultural diversity in both Canadian and international contexts. These investments foster a deeper understanding of bilingualism while supporting the use of English and French in Canadian society. They contribute to the development and enrichment of Francophone minority communities across the country, while also strengthening Canada’s position in the world, in the interest of a more just and culturally dynamic society.

SSHRC investments in research on official languages and related topics (bilingualism, multilingualism, language rights and policies, and OLMCs) totalled $41.4 million for the 2019 to 2023 period. This included 5 Canada Research Chairs, 427 projects, 560 researchers and 204 graduate students.

The Government of Canada needs to build on this momentum: even though the internationalization of scientific collaboration is a characteristic common to research-intensive countries, Canada—with two international languages as official languages—should be a global leader in multilingualism in science. This reality of the contemporary research system should not be seen as a constraint but rather as an opportunity to develop a knowledge production and dissemination system that promotes multilingualism and enhances Canada’s international profile.

Linguistic diversity is an asset for developing world-class science. Multilingualism allows for a plurality of perspectives on research topics, generally fostering a deeper understanding through the use of approaches grounded in different scientific traditions and concepts that vary across languages and cultures.Footnote 131 By investing more in research conducted in French, Canada could join forces with international stakeholders such as the International Organisation of La Francophonie (IOF) or UNESCO to promote multilingualism in research.

A science-diplomacy policy would be doubly beneficial for Canada. On the one hand, it would help promote research in French, given the importance of such research to Canada’s economic prosperity and international influence. On the other hand, it would provide a framework for Canada’s international engagement within the Francophonie, enabling it to fully play its role in international solidarity by favouring an approach based on dialogue, open science and discoverability.

The Advisory Panel recommends:

  • That the Government of Canada adopt a science-diplomacy policy in order to engage more coherently within the international Francophonie.

Chapter 5 Conclusion

In conclusion, promoting research in French is fundamental to equity and effective public action. As this chapter has shown, science that does not reach its audiences—whether community organizations, decision-makers or citizens—fails to fulfill its primary mission of contributing to the common good.

Canada has a robust research ecosystem and a dynamic French-speaking scientific community. However, the lack of adequate structures for knowledge mobilization and popularization has created a bottleneck that is depriving society of the benefits of these investments. By actively supporting knowledge dissemination, from the local level to the international diplomatic stage, the Government of Canada is doing more than merely meeting its language obligations: it is strengthening the country’s scientific culture, combating disinformation and ensuring Canada’s international visibility as a global leader in multilingual science.

Conclusion

The Advisory Panel was tasked with making recommendations to the Government of Canada on a strategy to secure the future of research in French in Canada. The Panel is proposing three recommendations accompanied by measures that it considers essential to achieving this objective.

The Advisory Panel based its work on a collaborative, scientific approach, engaging with the various stakeholders, including institutions with research responsibilities within the Government of Canada itself and the granting agencies. It is on the basis of that engagement and the data collected on research in French that this report was prepared.

This report’s contribution to the debate on the state of research in French since the publication of the Acfas study in 2021 is threefold. First, the Advisory Panel has clarified certain concepts key to a common understanding of the terms “research in French” and “scientific knowledge in French.” It has also proposed a research typology structured around four quadrants: creation, training the next generation, dissemination and promotion. For each quadrant, we have mapped the various components of the research ecosystem and highlighted the three major challenges facing those involved in research in French across the various sectors. The proposed approach may guide any future work on research in French that builds on the work initiated in this report.

Second, the report has clearly identified the many impediments to substantive equality in the research ecosystem in Canada, foremost among them linguistic bias and, more broadly, anglonormativity. Among other things, this report has shown that the prestige economy, grounded in rivalry and competition for funding and recognition, reinforces linguistic inequalities within the research ecosystem. This is compounded by the fact that this economy influences new generations and imposes disciplinary norms and expectations that are generally unfavourable to French. This report has also demonstrated that financial challenges are a major barrier to the advancement of research in French across all components of the research ecosystem. One challenge is that the next generation lacks access to French-language programs of study. Another is that dissemination environments have French-language infrastructures that are vulnerable and lack the resources needed to promote French-language science journalism. Organizational challenges that undermine substantive equality are also evident in the limited attention paid to intramural research in French within federal departments, the Government of Canada’s lack of interest in the discoverability of French-language content, and the absence of effective machine translation tools. These issues constitute major organizational barriers to the circulation of knowledge in French.

Lastly, the report has served to highlight the contribution of research in French to talent development and capacity building. It has clarified the extent of the contribution of knowledge in French to Canada’s economic prosperity and international influence.

The Advisory Panel hopes to build on the momentum generated by the preparation of this report to mobilize all stakeholders within Canada’s research ecosystem, in particular the Government of Canada, to ensure that the French-speaking scientific community can take its rightful place. The trajectory within this ecosystem—one that is unfavourable to French—needs to change, and the barriers to the advancement of the French-language scientific community need to be removed. Moreover, the anglonormative hegemony over the prestige economy needs to be addressed in order to make that economy more inclusive and pluralistic.

The recommendations and measures proposed in this report are a further step towards substantive equality, one that will help Canada fulfill its obligations under the Official Languages Act (PDF) by protecting and promoting French within the research ecosystem in Canada.

Investing more in research in French is about building on a competitive edge that is unique to Canada. It is about choosing diversity over uniformity, a diversity that fuels creativity. In doing so, Canada will be able to take its place as a modern, diverse, influential scientific power—in both official languages. This is the opportunity at hand.

Summary of recommendations and measures

Recommendation 1: Strengthen Canadian Research Governance

Measure 1: The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada create a Secretariat for the Coordination of Research in French (SCRF). The SCRF would be an integral part of the future umbrella research-funding organization. On an interim basis, it would be housed within Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, and its mandate would be as follows:

Measure 2: The Advisory Panel recommends that Canadian Heritage, in collaboration with provincial and territorial governments (including the Government of Quebec), establish a mechanism for pan-Canadian coordination on post-secondary education in French, one that brings together federal partners, the Association des collèges et universités de la francophonie canadienne (ACUFC), the Bureau de coopération interuniversitaire (BCI) and the post-secondary education community (colleges and universities). Its mandate would be to boost the supply of French-language programs in minority settings, with priority given to: health sciences (college); science, technology, engineering and mathematics—STEM (university); and graduate studies (humanities and social sciences).

Recommendation 2: Provide a New Dedicated Investment of $40 Million Per Year

The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada establish a Research in French Support and Promotion Fund (RFSPF). That strategic fund, worth at least $40 million per year (roughly 1% of federal research funding), would complement existing investments, acting as a catalyst for research in French.

The fund would support the rollout of the Federal Strategy to Support and Promote Research in French. It would comprise a Knowledge and Talent stream, focused on research in French and research on Francophone communities, and a Dissemination Infrastructures and Knowledge Promotion stream, which would support the full chain of knowledge dissemination, translation and mobilization.

Stream 1: Knowledge and Talent

Measure 3 (Knowledge): The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada create a program called “Francophone Missions” consisting of three equally funded components:

Measure 4 (Emerging Talent): The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada support the next generation of French-speaking researchers, specifically through four actions to be carried out by the research granting agencies and Canadian Heritage:

Stream 2: Dissemination Infrastructure and Knowledge Promotion

Measure 5 (Platform and Translation): The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada strengthen support for dissemination infrastructures and digital platforms through three actions to be carried out by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and National Research Council Canada (NRC):

Measure 6 (Scholarly Publishing): The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada enhance support for scholarly publishing through five actions to be carried out by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and PCH:

Measure 7 (Visibility): The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada provide financial support for scientific culture through four actions to be carried out by the granting agencies, Library and Archives Canada, and PCH:

Recommendation 3: Strengthen Government of Canada Leadership

The Government of Canada needs to lead by example, demonstrating transparency and a heightened sense of accountability for the substantive equality of official languages. It needs to ensure that its scientific activities and funding mechanisms reflect the intrinsic value of research in French and eliminate the systemic biases and negative perceptions that undermine the competitiveness and international standing of such research.

Measure 8 (Compliance and Accountability): The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada strengthen federal institutions’ compliance with the Official Languages Act (.PDF) (the Act) by supporting intramural French-language scientific research and publishing through three actions:

Measure 9 (Strengthened Mandates): The Advisory Panel recommends that the granting agencies and Library and Archives Canada help raise the profile of research in French through two actions:

Measure 10 (Transparency and Incentives): The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada mandate the granting agencies to create incentives to curb biases and address perceptions that undermine research in French through four actions:

Measure 11 (Evidence): The Advisory Panel recommends that Statistics Canada monitor graduation and enrolment trends in French and that the Government of Canada make the Survey on the Official Language Minority Population permanent.

Measure 12 (Science Diplomacy): The Advisory Panel recommends that the Government of Canada adopt a science-diplomacy policy in order to engage more coherently within the international Francophonie.

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2026-05-08