It is with great interest that we read the call from Quebec’s chief scientist, Rémi Quirion, to celebrate science in French and to roll up our sleeves, published on 1er last November in The duty. We can only echo this cry from the heart in favor of science! But why stop there? Canada can and must be ambitious!
The rapid evolution of climate change over the past few decades has prompted us to urgently rethink our relationship with our own environment. The actions we should take are multiple and complex. Among these, respect and protection of the diversity of natural environments by human communities are at the heart of the recommended strategies. In the scientific sphere, the same is true. To innovate and adapt to new challenges, societies must be careful to preserve the diversity of intellectual and scientific environments.
With this objective in mind, it is absolutely necessary to consider the presence of a French-speaking scientific community in the research ecosystem in Canada as a major asset and, consequently, preserved for its fair value.
Science in French carries with it a centuries-old scientific heritage, a network of solid and lasting international collaborations, diverse research objects and methodologies, academic establishments and dynamic research organizations. At the heart of this diversity, the institutional Francophonie, through the International Organization of La Francophonie, currently brings together 88 states and governments around the world; The Agence universitaire de la Francophonie enjoys a large community in approximately 120 countries, with more than 1,000 teaching and research establishments, including 33 in Canada, in eight provinces.
The approximately 321 million French speakers in the world, including more than 10 million in Canada, constitute an extremely large, dynamic and diverse population pool who can and must be educated and constantly informed in their mother tongue or their language of use in order to understand adequately address the scientific issues that arise. These issues represent vital challenges more than ever: climate change, health, food and agriculture, urban development, migration, education, energy, and many others.
Scientific diversity under attack
Science in French, when reduced to a particularity of language, places the entire French-speaking scientific ecosystem in a narrow situation of subordination or dependence. Take health for example: language is recognized as one of the social determinants of the field. Research should therefore systematically take it into account today in order to reduce health inequalities particularly affecting certain French-speaking communities, including the elderly and people living in remote rural regions.
In fact, if science is published mainly in English, the resulting social, cultural and technological transformations have repercussions on populations and communities that are largely non-English speaking.
Although French in Canada is indeed a numerically minority official language, science in French cannot be reduced to an accounting approach and thus minoritized — unless we consider that all non-English-speaking scientific ecosystems in the world are inferior and that They must be treated as such through second-rate policies. The risk would be to dangerously reduce the diversity of intellectual circles and to permanently dry up our capacity to debate, create and include difference in our public policies. Our national tradition, fortunately, is not currently moving in this direction.
Pursuing education and maintaining a competitive, quality research environment are public objectives that meet the need to develop a more inclusive society, both on the Canadian scale and on the international scene. However, science in French does not display a health that matches its importance. Several recent reports highlight the numerous difficulties faced by researchers, French-speaking research centers and institutes and French-speaking and bilingual universities in the country.
These reports and studies were widely reported in the media, especially French-speaking. To date, strong concrete measures that could correct this structural imbalance to the disadvantage of science in French are still awaited to respond to the numerous and relevant recommendations recommended in these various reports.
Committing to science in French means first of all wanting to know and recognize all the key actors and institutions that contribute to the science production cycle: the users of knowledge, namely the French-speaking communities. and their representative organizations, training and research establishments, researchers, research centers and institutes, research support organizations, granting agencies (federal and provincial), the world of publication and the dissemination of knowledge in all its forms (journals, scientists, media, organizations disseminating cultural content).
All these actors contribute to the dynamism and sustainability of science in French in the country. However, everyone is currently experiencing and facing significant challenges which, for some, threaten their very existence (Franco-Ontarian universities, for example).
A national strategy for science in French
The cycle of science production in French is thus blocked at all levels, and will weaken dangerously without the adoption of concrete and concerted measures. The time for observations and recommendations has now passed. The diagnoses are known and the possible solutions have been widely discussed, evaluated and approved by the French-speaking scientific community.
Today, without the implementation of a real national strategy for science in French that mobilizes all stakeholders, Canada will soon find itself with a diminished scientific culture, an abandoned scientific heritage and a voice that will not carry as far. . Such a strategy would consist first and foremost of better coordinating the initiatives and actors who today bring science to life in French. The world of research collectively has the capacity to draw the outlines of an ambitious roadmap with the support of granting agencies and the ministries responsible for research and higher education at the federal and provincial levels.
Without a real strategy to support science in French, Canada will deprive itself of strong partners in the fierce competition for the knowledge society, for the race for innovation and economic development. The importance that science diplomacy is gaining today reminds us that science is a major component of international affairs and the security of our societies.
We encourage all members of the scientific community of Quebec and Canada to add their voices to those of Rémi Quirion and Frédéric Bouchard and others to hammer out this concerted call in favor of science in French. We will also have the opportunity to return there in May 2024, when the University of Ottawa will host the Acfas Annual Congress, an all too rare visit outside Quebec of this important awareness and scientific popularization event in French.