Parliamentary committee urges stronger support for research in French

A House of Commons committee tasked with studying the allocation of federal research funding is urging greater efforts to support scientific research and publication in French. 

In its report, Impact of the Criteria for Awarding Federal Funding on Research Excellence in Canada, presented to the House of Commons on September 21, the committee makes 20 recommendations, of which two pertain directly to French-language research. 

The committee calls on the three main funding agencies — the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) — to ensure that funding applications submitted in French are treated equitably, and it recommends that the agencies consider introducing funding targets specifically for applications submitted in French. 

The recommendations stem from a study launched during the previous Parliament and resumed by the committee on June 18, 2025. The committee held a total of 10 meetings, heard from 49 witnesses and received 35 written briefs. 

“Systemic barriers remain an issue in French-language research, including differences in success rates according to language,” said Gabriel Miller, President and Chief Executive Officer of Universities Canada (which publishes University Affairs), in his testimony before the committee. 

In a brief presented to the committee, Université du Québec reported that, in certain programs, applications written in French, as well as those from small or medium-sized universities, have lower success rates. 

According to the university’s data, the share of federal funding allocated to francophone institutions dropped from 22 per cent in 2014 to 16 per cent in 2024. Université du Québec also noted that the number of grant applications submitted in French is proportionally lower than the demographic weight of francophones, and continues to decline. The École de technologie supérieure and the Association des collèges et universités de la francophonie canadienne (ACUFC) reported similar findings in their briefs. 

Martin Normand, President and Chief Executive Officer of ACUFC, noted “the anglicization of research, the internationalization of research objects and the predominance of publishing articles in English in Canada.” In his testimony before the committee, he said these trends “cast doubt on the excellence of research in French [and] help standardize scientific production.”  

The witnesses made several recommendations to address this situation. Speaking on behalf of ACUFC, Dr. Normand said that the granting agencies “are required to aim for substantive equality between the linguistic communities in the deployment of their programs.” He recommended that these agencies “adopt a real plan for implementing their obligations under the Official Languages Act” and that they “undertake a strategic review of their policies and programs with a view to reducing linguistic and institutional biases that undermine scientific production in French.” 

The evidence also highlighted a lack of specialists to evaluate grant applications in French. This shortage can lead to reviewers evaluating applications that are far from their field of expertise simply because they are francophone. 

In a written brief, Sylvain Hallé and 38 professors from Université du Québec à Chicoutimi argued that the granting agencies should “recognize the language of the submission and the size of the institution as equity parameters on the same level as gender, minority or disability.” They proposed establishing “a language correction fund or a weighting mechanism to offset the structural disadvantage associated with both small universities and applications submitted in French.” Their proposals also included: experimenting with de-identifying the language of applications at certain stages of the evaluation process; and setting percentage targets for the number of grant applications submitted in French and their rate of success. 

The concern regarding institutional size is also addressed in the committee’s final recommendations. It calls on granting agencies to cease using past grant amounts as a criterion for awarding funding, in order to avoid putting small or medium-sized post-secondary institutions at a disadvantage. It also recommends reviewing how the Research Support Fund operates to better assist these institutions with covering the indirect costs of research. 

Contrasting EDI recommendations 

Equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) also feature prominently in the report, although in a somewhat contradictory manner. On the one hand, the committee recommends removing all references to EDI in the awarding of federal funding, and banning the use of demographic quotas and proportionality targets.  In contrast, other recommendations suggest introducing compulsory EDI training for applicants, incorporating these principles into the design of research projects, and creating incentives for inclusive research teams. 

READ MORE: Remove EDI from research funding decisions, parliamentary committee says – University Affairs 

In explaining the contradictions, the Conservative Party of Canada’s dissenting opinion states: “Readers should be aware that it is unusual for parliamentary committee reports to contain contradictions like this in the published recommendations. However, these contradictions exist because the committee adopted the report as it was drafted, mutually agreeing to disagree on these contradicting recommendations. By doing so, the committee was able to advance the report while supporting and preserving the diversity of viewpoints expressed by witnesses throughout this study.”