This text is part of the special Acfas Congress booklet
The Acfas Annual Congress, which will take place at Laval University from May 9 to 13, will be very special, since it will mark the launch of the centenary festivities of the organization, created in Montreal in June 1923.
At the time, its founders — including the first president, Léo Pariseau, and the botanist and intellectual Marie-Victorin — wanted Acfas to help French Canadians enter fully into the production of scientific knowledge, particularly in developing scientific vocations in young people. In 1933, the association held its first congress, which has since become an annual tradition.
Its current president, the vice-rector for research and graduate studies at the Université de Sherbrooke, Jean-Pierre Perreault, is delighted to note that the organization has earned its letters of nobility over time. “Acfas has grown and now has 4,500 members,” he recalls. The Association is consulted, listened to, and we feel the appetite for its activities and its positions. Our website receives more than one million visits annually. »
Acfas will unveil the program of its centenary festivities at the opening of the convention on Monday, May 9. Jean-Pierre Perreault did not leak anything from its content, except that the organization is preparing “something magical” for June 15, 2023, one hundred years to the day after its founding. In addition, two conferences this year will focus on the centenary, namely 100 years of research: achievements and destinationsMay 10, and One hundred years of dialogue between science and society: inventory and prospects in scientific and technological culture and communicationMay 11 and 12.
A colorful program
The biologist Boucar Diouf, who this year received a doctorate honoris causa from Laval University, will act as honorary president of the conference. The choice of this popularizer, who never tires of helping the general public better understand nature and scientific activity, is not accidental.
In fact, Acfas also seeks to promote science popularization, in a context where interactions between the scientific world and the rest of society are not going smoothly. The theme chosen for the 2022 congress bears witness to this: sciences, innovations and societies. “The dialogue between science and society becomes even more crucial in the troubled times we are living through, hit by the pandemic, disinformation and an increase in geopolitical and military tensions”, recognizes Jean-Pierre Perreault.
Each year, the establishment that hosts the congress brings its color to it. The theme of innovation in 2022 thus reflects the emphasis that Université Laval places on this activity, particularly in certain privileged sectors. Among the 200 or so symposiums that will mark the week, some relate, for example, to digital technology at the service of mental health, the forest in the face of climate change or collaborative research with the Huron-Wendat nation to create a protected area north of Portneuf.
The dialogue between science and society becomes even more crucial in the troubled times we live in, hit by the pandemic, disinformation and an increase in geopolitical and military tensions.
Pandemic obliges, the conferences will be held remotely this year and more than 600 free communications will also be accessible online. About 6,000 people from 40 French-speaking countries are expected to attend the various Congress events. About fifteen activities will take place in hybrid mode.
Activities for all
Jean-Pierre Perreault attaches great importance to the Science-moi program! which, since 2013, has been aimed at the general public and students and aims at dialogue between science and society. Many of its free activities will be held in person, before the start of the congress. On Sunday, May 8, for example, journalist and science communicator Yanick Villedieu and actress Céline Bonnier will play some of the correspondence between Brother Marie-Victorin and his colleague Marcelle Gauvreau, at Université Laval’s Théâtre de la Cité universitaire. . These missives, in which we see a love that is both intense and delicate between the religious and his celibate colleague, were only published in 2018 and 2019.
Always spectacular and full of surprises since its beginnings in 2010, the competition The proof by the image is also continuing this year as part of the Science-moi! From May 9, Internet users will be able to observe the ten animated and commented images. Boucar Diouf will present a conference entitled “Adaptation according to Boucar”, with his friend and colleague the chemist Normand Voyer, professor at Laval University.
Pierre Picard, member of the Huron-Wendat nation and director of the Group for Psychosocial Research and Interventions in the Native Environment (GRIPMA), will come to share his knowledge and his findings on the enhancement of identity and cultural security in the Native environment at the Grand Ax of the Laval University Campus on Tuesday, May 10. The next day, Innu singer-songwriter Elisapie will give a performance.
Supporting the researchers of tomorrow
The founding members of Acfas did not hesitate to express their ideas or to demand that governments give science the importance which, in their eyes, should be theirs. Marie-Victorin, in particular, has written many very committed texts, including a well-felt plea for science, published in The duty September 25, 1925.
The organization has not lost this militant fiber. Acfas, for example, reacted to the last federal budget to call for investments in all types of research (including basic research) and better support for the next generation. Acfas also stressed the need to strengthen science in the Canadian Francophonie outside Quebec, where the Association notes a decline in research in French.
The budget devotes several billion dollars to innovation, but concentrates it in the private sector and targets certain themes. The government has announced few investments to support basic research within the federal granting councils.
“We are always delighted to see investments in research and innovation, but the State must fund all disciplines and it must increase the budget of the federal granting councils,” insists Jean-Pierre Perreault.
He reminds us that the job market is working at full capacity and presents lucrative opportunities to baccalaureate graduates. Attracting them to higher education therefore becomes more difficult. Especially since the level of scholarships for excellence has stagnated for almost twenty years, while the cost of living continues to climb.
“If we lose too many young researchers, we risk drying up the pipeline of future major discoveries,” he adds. Ensuring the progress of knowledge is essential when we want to have a knowledge-based economy. »