As a university professor, the funding and policies of education and higher education are at the heart of my life. Over the past ten years, I have had the privilege of working as an adviser to four ministers in three different parties. I was deputy chief of staff for two of them.
While the ink on the signatures of our new ministers is still fresh, there are undoubtedly a few recommendations that I would make to each of them, but the first will go to Minister Jean-François Roberge: get closer to your counterpart Minister Pascale Déry. Ideally, add that of Economy and Innovation as well as that of International Relations and La Francophonie.
Why ? Because beyond the errors in French that ministers make during their swearing-in and which make me laugh, it is clear to me that the fate of French is intimately linked to that of science. In the French-speaking world, we do not always share the same idea of what the university is or should be and we do not have a common vision. But we have to get there, and Quebec can play a crucial role.
Why ? To talk about it, I will use the words of the Premier of Québec, François Legault, following his last election, on October 3: “the first duty of a Premier [au Québec], is to ensure that the French language keeps all its place, all its vigour”. May it prosper, in a way!
However, the most important linguistic crisis is not taking place in Montreal. It takes place in science. I do not need to say more: all those who work in science are each day more subservient to the imperatives of the English language, essentially because our societies do not offer an equivalent or better scientific life to people who evolve in a French-speaking science. Students, at the forefront, need to master English for a variety of reasons, and this then continues in the workplace.
To change the situation, Quebec must first do two things. First, it must stop supporting the recruitment of students who come to study in Quebec in English. Then, it must take the greatest possible place in the French-speaking world, in particular through the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie… Moreover, no delegation from Quebec is currently planned for the meeting of the ministers of the Francophonie, which will take place at the end of this week in Egypt.
In this developing Francophone space, we must not only stop the decline of scientific literacy in French, but also promote it. And this does not only affect the production of scientific articles in French or their translation, but also access to a wide range of manuals, books and online learning activities. This means that we must give priority to congresses in French as well, but above all, to offer the young people who follow us a rich and prosperous scientific life when it is practiced in French.
Maintaining the French fact will depend on the attractiveness of French-speaking colleges and universities for the populations who attend them or who are likely to attend them, everywhere in our territories: the best teachers, management and other staff, the best spaces, the best learning environments, the best teaching practices, the best technologies… Research work must be done naturally in French, which also challenges the Minister of Economy and Innovation.
As I have already written, we will live a francophone science if this choice allows us to live from it.
However, the new Minister of Higher Education has all the tools to support French-language recruitment outside Quebec and stop supporting English-language recruitment.
She could very well:
1. deregulate the tuition fees of foreign students who enroll in research programs offered in English in the 2e and 3e university cycles and redistribute the sums thus freed up to French-speaking universities, or allocate them to the development of French-language or bilingual programs in English-speaking universities, which could be offered jointly with French-language universities;
2. stop financially supporting non-resident Canadian students who come to study in Quebec in English (deregulation) and allow Canadians who wish to do so to come and study in French at a rate that would be the same as for Quebecers (a strategy of talent recruitment without migration process !!!). All the sums thus recovered could be redistributed to French-language universities;
3. design, together with other partners, a mobility program in the Francophonie (a kind of Erasmus World) that would make it possible to forge ties and create stronger and closer relationships between young people from the Francophonie.
François Legault is right when he affirms that “the first duty of a prime minister [au Québec], is to ensure that the French language keeps all its place, all its vigour”. But this cannot be done without science or without forging stronger relationships with other Francophones around the world.