THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON OFFICIAL LANGUAGES
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Monday, November 18, 2024
The Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages met with videoconference this day at 4:59 p.m. [ET] to study matters relating to minority-language health services.
Senator René Cormier (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: I am René Cormier, senator from New Brunswick and chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages.
[English]
Before we begin, I would like to ask all senators and other in-person participants to consult the cards on the table for guidelines to prevent audio feedback incidents. Please make sure to keep your earpiece away from all microphones at all times. When you are not using your earpiece, place it face down on the sticker placed on the table for this purpose. Thank you all for your cooperation.
[Translation]
I would now invite committee members to introduce themselves, starting on my right.
Senator Mégie: Marie-Françoise Mégie, Quebec.
Senator Clement: Bernadette Clement, Ontario.
Senator Moncion: Lucie Moncion, Ontario.
The Chair: Welcome, esteemed colleagues.
[English]
I wish to welcome you and all viewers across the country who may be watching. I would like to point out that we are taking part in this meeting from the unceded unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe Nation.
[Translation]
Tonight, for our final meeting on our study of matters relating to minority-language health services, we welcome organizations able to talk about the theme of research and evidence, which is one of our study’s seven themes.
[English]
Joining us in person, we welcome Christian Baron, Vice-President, Research Programs from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Welcome, sir.
[Translation]
Isabelle Giroux, Co-leader of the Groupe de recherche sur la formation et les pratiques en santé et service social en contexte francophone minoritaire, from the University of Ottawa. Welcome, Ms. Giroux.
Thanks to you both for accepting our invitation to appear before us. We are now ready to hear your opening remarks. They will be followed by rounds of questions from senators.
[English]
Mr. Baron, the floor is yours.
[Translation]
Christian Baron, Vice-President, Research Programs, Canadian Institutes of Health Research: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. First of all, I want to thank the committee for the invitation to appear before you today. I am truly honoured for the opportunity to contribute to your important work on supporting people living in official language minority settings.
[English]
As you may know, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, or CIHR, is Canada’s federal funding agency for health research. CIHR serves a vibrant health research community. We fund and support up to 16,000 world-class researchers and trainees annually. CIHR excels across all pillars of health research, from biomedical research, to clinical research, to research on health services, population and public health.
The majority of CIHR’s funding is dedicated to investigator-led research through our flagship program — the Project Grant competition — where researchers can submit an application on any health-related topic of their choice.
With respect to today’s discussion, CIHR recognizes that unique health challenges faced by Canadians living in linguistic minority communities need to be addressed. That is why CIHR has been supporting targeted investments in official language minority communities — we use the acronym OLMC — which are designed to increase our understanding of the health issues of Canadians living in French and English minority situations. In fact, CIHR is currently investing $3 million over six years to fund two OLMC researcher-led teams — one in a French community outside of Quebec and one for an English community in Quebec — to generate new knowledge to advance our understanding of the health care issues facing Canadians living in OLMC.
Through a collaborative approach, it is expected that these research projects will enhance the understanding and accelerate the resolution of issues in OLMC. This investment will cultivate collaborations that build and strengthen co-design —
The Chair: Excuse me, Mr. Baron. Can I ask you to slow down a bit so we make sure that interpretation is fine?
Mr. Baron: Absolutely.
This investment will cultivate collaborations that build and strengthen co-design and partnerships between researchers and the minority communities. It will also facilitate the integration of evidence to inform health policies and programs through knowledge mobilization activities. Additionally, it will increase research capacity through the creation of a high-quality training environment for trainees and early career researchers.
[Translation]
Furthermore, CIHR leveraged its last four Project Grant competitions to invite researchers to submit their proposals on priority research on health in OLMCs.
One example of such a project is that led by Dr. Lise Bjerre from the Institut du Savoir Montfort in Ottawa. Her research team is seeking to understand the burden francophones in Northern Ontario face in accessing health care services in French. This important work aims to broaden our understanding of this challenge and lead to the creation of an interactive map for French health care providers in northern Ontario.
In addition, CIHR remains committed to patient-oriented research which engages patients, their caregivers and families as partners in the research process. For instance, through its Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research Initiative, CIHR supports the Centre for Rural and Northern Health Research. It is dedicated to the needs of communities in northern Ontario, with a particular focus on rural, Indigenous and francophone communities. A recent example of their work includes projects to address the needs of French-speaking immigrants, such as creating a tool for providers to facilitate interactions with francophone immigrants.
Beyond targeted research investments, CIHR also strives to promote the inclusion and advancement of groups under-represented in science as one of the means to enhance excellence in research, training and knowledge mobilization.
This includes a series of actions to fulfill our obligations under the Official Languages Act, such as measures to support health researchers’ equitable access to CIHR programs and services in the official language of their choice.
For example, CIHR introduced equalization measures to its Project Grant competition to ensure that the proportion of French applications funded is not less than the proportion of French applications submitted to the competition. CIHR has also taken measures to reinforce its ability to review applications in both official languages. These include translating peer-review materials and implementing a targeted recruitment strategy to increase the pool of peers able to assess French-language applications.
These are only a few measures that CIHR has taken to uphold our strong commitment to serve our research community in the official language of their choice.
In conclusion, through research funding, knowledge mobilization, collaborative partnerships and improvements to our funding policies and procedures, CIHR is driving progress towards a more equitable and inclusive health care system for the benefit of all Canadians.
Thank you very much. I would be happy to respond to the committee’s questions.
The Chair: Thank you very much, sir. The floor is yours, Ms. Giroux.
Isabelle Giroux, Co-leader of the Groupe de recherche sur la formation et les pratiques en santé et service social en contexte francophone minoritaire, University of Ottawa, as an individual: Hello and thank you. The members of Ottawa University’s Groupe de recherche sur la formation et les pratiques en santé et service social en contexte francophone minoritaire, also known as GReFoPS, are very grateful for your attention on research results and evidence regarding health and social services offered to Canadian francophone minority communities, or FMCs.
The seven key points to which we would like to call your attention are the following:
First, the active offer of health and social services in official languages, namely French, increases the quality and safety of social and health services for Canadians, including those from FMCs. Active offer is defined as:
… an invitation … to use the official language of one’s choice. The offer to speak in the official language of one’s choice must precede the request for service.
It also means ensuring service continuity thereafter in the preferred official language.
I will skip a few sub-points due to the time granted to me. However, I would be pleased to come back to them later.
The lack of active offer lowers the quality — as well as the safety — of health and social services, because it can lead to communication problems and breakdowns, poor needs assessment, wrong diagnoses, disagreements and conflicts, medical errors, the inability to provide informed consent, complications with one’s state of health, etc.
Second, Canadians from FMCs need an active offer to exercise their right to access health and social services in the official language of their choice. This is because research results show that, despite their needs, individuals from FMCs tend not to request services in French for several well-documented reasons. These include embarrassment, linguistic insecurity, fear of appearing to be demanding, fear of having to wait longer, fear that services will not be of good quality, anxiety, and I could go on.
Thirdly, the active offer of health and social services in the official languages is a competency, so its learning must include the acquisition of relevant knowledge and the development of practical skills — such as how to be, do and act — and the progressive use of judgment in its application. Our work has identified 21 essential competency indicators of the active offer of health and social services in French to support learning and enable formative assessment of future professionals in simulated learning activities.
The active offer of services in French is a complex skill that must be taught, practised and assessed from the first years of training for future health and social services professionals, so that they can gradually learn to adopt the various active offer behaviours to increase their level of confidence in these skills.
Fourth, in our opinion, experiential training in active offer competency with an interprofessional collaborative approach is effective in increasing the competency of francophone, anglophone and allophone providers, including future and current professionals, so that all health and social service providers adopt an inclusive approach. We believe that enhancing active offer training for future and current professionals in training and practice settings will have a snowball effect and increase access to safe, quality care for FMC members.
Fifth, the shortage of bilingual health and social service professionals could be addressed through greater support for French-language training programs in minority settings for future professionals, who have very few resources to support quality training — including experiential training — for students coming from FMCs.
Sixth, as language is an important determinant of Canadians’ health, a proactive approach that provides training and care institutions with the resources they need to implement active offer and effective strategies to increase health system performance for FMCs would increase equity of access to safe, quality care for Canadians, while reducing the costs associated with these services. This includes the implementation of progressive experiential training for active offer in initial training programs and ongoing training for health and social service providers, as well as the evaluation of its impact. This also includes integrating this essential competency for Canadians into the mandatory training curriculum for health and social services disciplines, which is governed by the health and social services professional regulatory bodies, as well as the national accreditation standards for training programs for these professionals. I’ll come back to this later. You have the conclusions of the brief in hand.
Seventh, there is a need to support multi-year research on active offer for the benefit of FMCs with more resources. This would make it possible to evaluate the implementation of experiential training in active offer competency and the impact of training for future and current professionals in university and college training environments, and in health and social services practice settings for beneficiaries; it would also enable collaboration and national sharing of best practices in active offer training and evaluation of training impact, both for anglophones, allophones and francophones. This would enable a more concerted and effective approach.
It should also be considered that there are 20% more words in French than in English. Granting agencies should therefore not only give enough grants for research on FMCs, but also include 20% more places for funding applications submitted in French, not to mention support for peer reviews that understand the reality of FMCs. This would enable FMC health and social service researchers to submit their funding applications in French.
In short, these seven elements demonstrate the need for more support and resources for health and social services for FMC members in Canada.
We hope these results will serve as recommendations to the federal government on measures to enhance the quality and safety of French-language health and social service delivery for Canada’s FMCs. Please let us know if you would like more information on these or other aspects of the FMC situation. Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you for that presentation, Ms. Giroux. We will now open the floor to questions from the senators.
I’ll start with Senator Moncion, followed by Senator Mégie. You have plenty of time to ask your questions.
Senator Moncion: My first question is for you, Mr. Baron. You mentioned, in speaking of research in French, that you have requests and that you want to offer equitable access to research in French and in English.
When a researcher submits their application, that is, when they present the results of their research, do they present them in French, or do they have to present them in a bilingual format?
Mr. Baron: Thank you for the question. It’s up to the researchers to present either in English or in French. We leave it up to the researchers. As I mentioned briefly in my statement, the applications are translated so that all the members of the peer-review committee who evaluate the grant applications can fully understand them. Our aim is that, whatever the language chosen for the presentation of research results, they should be evaluated fairly. We want the excellence of the research and its impact to be evaluated in the same way, even if the members of the evaluation committee are not all bilingual.
Senator Moncion: I’ll go further with my question. If, for example, a researcher submits his application or the results of his research in French, are you going to have the results of the research translated — I imagine — or are you going to keep them in their entirety in French?
Mr. Baron: Thank you for this excellent question. At CIHR, since the evaluation of grant applications is very important, we take several measures to ensure the quality of the presentation.
First of all, as Ms. Giroux pointed out, we give 20% more space so that French-speaking researchers can present their applications in the same way, given that written French takes up more space. In addition, we translate applications for peer reviewers who are unable to evaluate applications in French. Thirdly, we have made significant efforts to ensure that translation becomes less and less necessary. We have established an evaluator recruitment strategy to ensure that at least 25% of peer review committee members are able to evaluate applications in French without recourse to translation. However, the reality in Canada is that not everyone is bilingual. For the other researchers who evaluate the applications, we have them translated so that they can do the evaluation properly.
The Chair: Ms. Giroux, did you want to speak on this question from Senator Moncion?
Ms. Giroux: I commend CIHR for the 20% extra space, but that’s not the case with all councils and granting agencies. Thank you for your leadership on this issue.
There are big dilemmas among researchers. Many of them decide to submit their research in English, because they’re afraid their application won’t be well understood, in addition to the fear of running out of space. For example, if a request is too robotic because you don’t have the extra 20%, you’re afraid the referees won’t fully understand what you’re saying, or you’re afraid you’ll be criticized for not having enough detail to fully understand the request due to lack of space.
Also, often the people in the majority situation who review requests don’t understand the situation. This can fluctuate. For example, a grant application originally submitted in French may be judged one way, but if it’s resubmitted in English, it’s evaluated another way.
I don’t know if you understand these barriers for researchers. It’s like doing gymnastics when you’re trying to figure out if you’ll have better luck submitting your application in English. It’s possible that minority francophones don’t understand reality. It’s also possible to be criticized, because our application may not be well understood due to the lack of space in all sections of the application.
Thanks to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, when we submit an application in French, we can now use 20% more words. A complete application contains an abstract and different parts. We have a specific number of characters or page limit. We should benefit from this 20% more words in all sections of an application. We thank you for this. With the leadership of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, we hope that all this will have an impact on the other members of the three granting councils, since researchers will also be submitting grant applications to them that concern the health and social services situation of minority francophones.
The Chair: Thank you for the clarification, Ms. Giroux.
Senator Moncion: It sounds like a potential loss of meaning. It goes back to Ms. Giroux’s answers. A researcher applies for a grant in French and it’s presented to a jury made up of French-speaking and English-speaking members. To meet the needs of English-speaking jury members, you have to translate the document. There may be a loss of meaning between what is written in French and what is written in English. When translated into English, does the researcher who submitted the application have a right of review over the English version that is submitted? He submitted a French version, which you had translated. Does the French-speaking researcher review this translated application to ensure that the meaning is the same?
Mr. Baron: Thank you for your very good question. I don’t have an immediate answer. As I understand it, the researchers are not going to validate this request. It would be a very good suggestion to consider in the future.
Thank you, Ms. Giroux, for highlighting our efforts.
That said, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research work closely with the other councils. As you pointed out, these issues concern all researchers in all fields of research. I recognize the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the other councils that translate applications. We invest a lot into obtaining quality translations. Validation by researchers is a very good idea. I will propose it to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research for consideration.
Senator Moncion: At the next step, when you receive an application in English, do you have it translated for your jury members to review? The English speaker can’t see if there’s a loss of meaning. Is it then presented in English? I’m trying to find out if it’s the same on both sides.
Mr. Baron: If necessary, we will translate from English to French. However, since the vast majority of requests are submitted in English, translation is not really necessary.
I’ve given you a list of suggestions for measures to increase the number of French applications. So far, I have to admit that we haven’t had the success we’d hoped for. Only 2% of projects submitted are written in French. We’d like to have more of them, in order to build a bilingual community. However, regardless of this, even though the number of applications is relatively limited, we have increased the number of bilingual reviewers on the committee to at least 25% in order to avoid the need for translation and the loss of sense of context, as you have very rightly pointed out.
Senator Mégie: My question is for Mr. Baron.
I applaud the initiative to implement catalyst programs to improve the health of official language minority communities. Are these initiatives still in effect, or do they continue to expand more and more?
Mr. Baron: Thank you, senator, for your excellent question. In 2020, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research implemented an action plan to improve researcher access and capacity to evaluate applications in both official languages, with particular attention to people living in minority language situations. We started by creating more capacity and with relatively small grants, such as $100,000 for one year, to strategically support this capacity growth in the research community. Several million dollars have been invested in this way.
I’d say we’re now in the second stage. We are funding two larger team grants, one for the French-speaking minority community and one for the English-speaking minority community. Again, this is to help grow the number of researchers and students.
We can see a trajectory emerging that could lead to further investments in the future. It’s hard to predict right now, but we’re in very close contact with the community, like Ms. Giroux and her colleagues, because we want to know if this is meeting their needs and the needs of their community, and what we can do differently. We’re always listening.
Also, I’m talking about relatively small amounts of money that are strategically invested in areas of research. That said, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research invests $325 million twice a year in an open competition, the Project Grants competition. This competition is open to applications in any field of research. For researchers who are interested in the issues we’re discussing here, such as French-speaking minority communities, or English-speaking minority communities, it’s always possible to get a lot more money through the open competition, which is really open and driven by the interests of the researchers. We’re trying to accommodate them through the measures we’ve already discussed in response to your colleague’s questions.
Senator Mégie: Thank you. Have you started collecting information on the impact of these initiatives?
Mr. Baron: Thank you for that very good question. Knowledge mobilization and impact measurement are always part of the work of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. That said, our role is to fund research, which includes evaluative research. I don’t have any information on this at the moment. We’ll be able to provide you with more complete information.
We’ve had this strategy in place since 2020. All in all, I think we’ve made good progress. For the investments I mentioned, the team grants will be funded and announced very soon. This is our response to feedback from the community, which has asked us for more strategic investments. For us, it’s an important way of responding. We’ll see what the impact will be.
The Chair: Senator, I believe Ms. Giroux wants to speak on this issue.
Ms. Giroux: Thank you for everything that you said about the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. It certainly helps minority communities. At the same time, systemic barriers remain, given the lack of recruitment in the health care and social services professions. Programs have few resources to attract candidates.
As I said in our brief, training programs in minority communities face a number of barriers. This means that educators who also work as researchers have fewer replacements to train future researchers and graduate students and to help the next generation of researchers studying minority communities.
In addition, the latest Acfas conference featured a symposium on the situation of francophone minority communities. It addressed the fact that financial support is still ad hoc, despite the funding just awarded for the CIHR grant for teams responsible for research on official language minority communities. We’re really pleased with this. It will last for a number of years. However, the funding available is often small and ad hoc, which makes supporting the next generation and Canadian networking complicated.
At this symposium on francophone minority communities in Canada, we noted that many initiatives exist. However, given the lack of resources, it’s difficult to collaborate and measure the impact of best practices in the communities.
I also want to say that, as researchers in a minority community, we also make efforts to publish our work in French. This isn’t considered in the impact factors for anglophones when researchers submit funding applications. We apply for a grant and look at certain impact factors. Publications in French aren’t taken into account. As researchers, we often need to decide whether to publish in English, to contribute to impact factors, or in French, to maintain the connection with our grants for francophones in minority communities.
We have debates along these lines. As a result, we’re at a disadvantage in terms of training for recruits in the field of research and support for research throughout the whole process, right up to the Canada-wide benefits. Even though we’re a highly motivated group that wants to make progress, there should be specific funding to support research over a number of years, rather than just once in a while. Nevertheless, we really appreciate what’s already being done.
In addition, there was — in 2023, I believe — a wonderful OLMC conference. It provided an excellent opportunity for networking. If this type of networking could be promoted across the country, it would help support research for francophones and anglophones in minority communities.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Giroux.
Senator Mégie: You talked about a competition. What is it for? Is it to assess the quality of the presentation, the language used in the application or the purpose of the research? What criteria are used to judge the candidate for a grant, for example?
Mr. Baron: Thank you for this excellent question, which also touches on some of Ms. Giroux’s points.
It’s a mix of criteria. It’s an assessment carried out by a committee of peers, who are researchers responsible for assessing applications in certain fields of research and at the CIHR. An example would be our project competition. About 60 committees are tasked with classifying applications for assessment by colleagues with expertise. The quality and impact of the research are reviewed. It’s a multifactorial assessment.
As Ms. Giroux said, there are major challenges, especially for francophone researchers. These challenges include a certain research culture surrounding so-called impact factors. Some journals are considered more significant than others. This assessment metric still exists. We changed our assessment policy. We haven’t completely omitted the impact factor, but we’ve made it less significant in relation to other factors. We focus on the impact of research and the societal impact of research.
The impact factor remains on the table and also depends on the pillars of the research fields. Certain research fields consider this factor the most significant criterion. However, we take care to separate the quality and impact assessment from this type of metric assessment, which is somewhat artificial and which certainly places French-language research at a disadvantage. This was made clear by the tri-council policy, which supported this position.
Senator Mégie: I have one last question. Do you manage to find a balance between francophone and anglophone judges in this competition?
Mr. Baron: Good question. It’s a challenge. I can’t deny it. Most assessors are used to assessing applications in English. As a result, we made an extra effort to recruit at least 25% of researchers in a field where they can assess applications in French. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we need francophone assessors. The proportion of francophones in the Quebec population is higher than this. We can also add francophones from outside Quebec to this figure. The 25% should reflect the presence of francophones across the country. We try to have skilled people to assess applications in French. All the same, there’s a gap in our bilingual country. The proportion should be higher than this. However, we’re aiming for a realistic target of 25%. We reached that target.
Senator Mégie: Thank you.
The Chair: I have a follow-up question. When you say 25%, is that the proportion of people who have the skills to read and understand French, or does this include people who are also familiar with the realities of francophone minority communities? In addition to understanding a language, people need to understand a whole social context to make research significant in a given part of the country. Are juries also required to have these skills?
Mr. Baron: Good question. The skill to assess a research topic is evaluated separately. As I said, we have about 60 committees covering all medical research. Researchers must self-report their skills to conduct assessments in this field of research. This means that researchers will be recruited to assess network applications up for funding. These researchers must have both assessment and language skills. The researchers’ skills are assessed by means of self-reporting in a particular field. However, this is done separately. We’re talking here about research in areas of scientific and cultural expertise, in addition to language skills.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Baron.
Senator Clement: Thank you for your testimonies and congratulations on your careers. I don’t think that my colleagues will be surprised to hear me talk about intersectionality — my primary interest — and the complexity that this adds to the research field.
Mr. Baron, I was with the senators of African descent this afternoon. We heard good things about your institute through the Black Mental Health Canada initiative. This is good.
You talked about tools for immigrants. I would first like to know who can use them. Second, what led to their development? What’s next? I also want to know whether research requests have increased for both the minority language and for francophones who belong to an immigrant or a racialized community. Is there a trend toward this type of research? Are there partnerships for access to information? You fund research, but is the data available to the community?
I was in Hawkesbury on Saturday with immigrant women from francophone African countries. They had many questions about data. However, they have no way of knowing where to obtain information that could help them get organized as a community to meet their needs.
Ms. Giroux, it would be good to hear your comments on this topic. Your comments on the active offer are fascinating. You said that there are successful instances, but that if it isn’t provided at the time of the service request, people move on to something else.
I don’t know whether you also want to comment on how to resolve this situation when the mistake has already been made. That’s a lot of questions. You can choose which ones to answer.
Mr. Baron: Those are good questions. I may not have fully understood all the questions. For the CIHR, it’s definitely crucial, in all our funding applications, to look at certain criteria such as societal needs and equity, diversity and inclusion issues. These issues naturally include questions concerning the health of immigrant populations.
In terms of the release of data, for the CIHR, data availability, knowledge mobilization and publication are certainly the key factors for all three councils. When seeking additional funding in the future, researchers are also assessed on their ability to publish research data in a format that at least the scientific community can access. However, I realize that this isn’t easy for researchers. It greatly depends on their field of research.
In addition, knowledge mobilization plays a key role for us, as does working closely with the communities concerned.
As I said in my opening remarks, the strategy for patient-oriented and partner-oriented research talks less and less about patients, but rather about partners who may be caregivers. This research is deeply connected to the people and the benefits must be accessible to them. Does it always reach this point? We try to listen to communities to find out what they need.
I can give you an example. The CIHR has a number of advisory boards. One of them helped us with our anti-racism action plan. We really worked with researchers, but also with community members to get to know the real challenges facing the community. Another advisory board works on AIDS and infectious disease research. We regularly visit communities and talk with them because we want to understand their real needs.
I want to talk about a third aspect. At the CIHR, we’ve put a great deal of effort into funding research done by the community. People generally think that research, especially at the CIHR, is carried out in universities in buildings with well-equipped laboratories. However, we believe that funding for community-based research is a key issue. We’ve worked hard to make community organizations eligible to receive research funding directly. This concerns communities, including racialized people, but also Indigenous people. This is important to us.
As with the OLMCs, we need to build more capacity. We’re convinced that, to improve the health of Canadians, we must really listen to the needs on the ground. We must also fund research outside the realm of basic research. We call this implementation research. We want to understand why, for example, certain drugs aren’t accepted by the community. What’s the real reason? A number of topics, and I can name a few, have a medical solution. However, the solution isn’t reaching the public. We’re also funding this research issue. It’s important. We want drugs, prevention and vaccines to get to the right place.
I don’t think that I’ve answered all your questions. My last point is that, when we assess the applications received, we look at the section on equity, diversity and inclusion, or EDI, in our questionnaire. We ask for information on people’s origins. We can’t determine whether they’re immigrants. However, we do ask, for example, whether they’re racialized people. In recent competitions, up to 30% of applicants have been racialized people. This includes immigrants, of course, but also people who may have lived in Canada for a long time.
Senator Clement: Is that what you mean when you refer to tools for francophone immigrants? That’s what you talked about in your opening remarks.
Mr. Baron: Tools —
Senator Clement: Is that what you’re talking about? I’m trying to understand.
Mr. Baron: Sorry.
[English]
Senator Clement: Tools for francophone immigrants. Did you not speak about that?
Mr. Baron: Tools for francophone immigrants?
[Translation]
I was talking about the tools that people need to access the information required to apply for grants, yes.
Senator Clement: When the researchers submit their applications.
Mr. Baron: Yes. That’s right. We’re trying to make research funding accessible to community groups. Typically, the CIHR is known for funding research in so-called modern facilities with a great deal of equipment. However, the reality is that the CIHR funds all areas of research, including community-based research that takes place in communities, particularly immigrant communities.
Senator Clement: Okay. Thank you.
Ms. Giroux: Thank you. You have made some excellent points about vulnerable populations. In my opening remarks, I didn’t have time to read everything on this topic. That’s why we sent you the detailed English and French versions with the scientific references. I would appreciate it if you could look at them more closely after our discussion.
Clearly, even more vulnerable populations have been identified within minority language communities. Immigrant populations are on this list.
As a research group, we include researchers from these different communities that are even more vulnerable. We’ve also held discussions to better understand the situation. We’ve developed educational tools. We use these tools to train current and future professionals in the realities of immigrant communities. Basically, the minority language is an additional barrier for immigrants in terms of access to services.
When you arrive in the country as an immigrant and you’re in a minority francophone situation, and all of a sudden you don’t feel well and you need to access services, there’s often a language-related breakdown in communication. Often, people’s first language is neither French nor English, and they have to try and figure out what to do about understanding the health and social services system. We’ve even developed tools to help them understand better, because the stories we hear from immigrant community services about access to health care are fairly dramatic. They’re not always success stories. Often, people get discouraged and stop trying to access care, and they’re so isolated and vulnerable that sometimes their health gets worse.
From a physical health and mental health perspective…. That’s why you’ll also see vulnerable people on this list, because mental health challenges make people vulnerable. When you add it all up, you have people experiencing difficulty gaining access. So yes, research is important, as has been mentioned — and I salute the CIHR, because they have guidelines that researchers use for research focused on the needs of patients, patient partners, and they involve communities right from the initial planning stages and throughout the duration of projects. These initiatives benefit minority groups.
In research, gender is identified. It would be good, when identifying the language of a research participant, to be able to identify whether there are francophones, anglophones, allophones and whether there are minority groups, because we know that when you submit a grant application, you have to explain how you’re going to deal with gender-related data. It would be nice to have additional education related to the minority language context, and to have the required information to analyze that data afterwards, as reported by the researchers.
To answer your question directly, there are many people who face challenges in accessing health and social services, and many testimonials indicate that when they’re feeling anxious, people find it difficult to advocate for access, given the extra effort it requires. An active offer gives people the opportunity to express themselves in the official language of their choice. That reduces anxiety and reassures and helps people and their families who need support, whereas if this isn’t done from the outset, there’s a risk that these people won’t have access to health care, which can have negative consequences. You think you’re saving money by avoiding making active offer mandatory, but at the end of the day, you’re losing out in terms of quality of life, complications and time when these people have complications and have to go back and forth. These are major challenges for community members.
Finally, it would be cheaper to raise awareness on active offer and measure its impacts. We already have evidence of the positive impact of active offer; we don’t have much, but we’re hoping for more resources to do more research. We do a great deal of work with institutions, which face major challenges.
I haven’t had time to read everything in the opening remarks about the challenges faced by managers trying to implement and evaluate active offer, but there’s definitely a lack of resources. Managers and community members want to do more, but they have very few resources to work with.
Senator Clement: Thank you very much.
The Chair: Before we move on to the second round, I have a question. How is data shared? There seems to be a whole ecosystem around research — both more formal research and community research. Data flows from all of that. Is there enough support to facilitate the sharing of that data? If so, what are those means? If they’re not sufficient, how can the federal government — in its capacity to fund research — better support data sharing, to ensure that communities and individuals can make adequate use of it?
Ms. Giroux: Of course, minority group allies, including the Consortium national de formation en santé, or CNFS, and the various universities and colleges are doing superb work with resources that should be increased to provide the next generation with training at all levels, for example. I know there are symposiums where these exchanges can be simulated. The Société Santé en français also is directly connected with the community in all its networking activities across the country. So, they’re going to try to keep the information flowing.
Certainly, researchers will network with Société Santé en français and CNFS to share research results. GReFoPS has a website as well, so we’re also trying to share information. Of course, static websites aside, we think there’s a great deal to be gained from exchanges and discussions with community members and the platforms that support them. More support in that regard would therefore be greatly appreciated.
The Chair: Thank you. I now have a question for Mr. Baron.
[English]
On November 27, 2023, Suzanne Dupuis-Blanchard, professor at the Université de Moncton, made some observations before this committee on the Canadian Institutes of Health Research that I would appreciate receiving clarification on, if possible.
She said the following, and I’m directly quoting her testimony:
For researchers like us, federal funding is what matters. . . . The Canadian Institutes of Health Research . . . used to have a competition specifically for official language minority communities . . . and I was awarded funding under that stream. That funding or competition ended, and we were told that it would be brought back. . . . but unfortunately, I found out that there won’t be a specific competition for OLMCs because of budget cutbacks in various departments. . . .
Could you enlighten us on this subject, sir?
Mr. Baron: Thanks very much, Mr. Chair. It’s an excellent question. I think the colleague who made these comments made them based on a situation in the past because we brought back these funding streams on OLMC research first and catalyst grants over many years, and now we’re ramping up for the team grants that are rolled out. I think this is not necessarily the end. Even if I cannot project into the future, I think the trajectory is there.
The CIHR has listened to the community. We were talking to ResearchNB this morning, and we have had very good engagement on other things we could do to support research more in smaller institutions in rural regions. It was a very productive exchange, and we’re looking forward to working with them in future.
As to the specific question concerning the OLMCs, I think we listened to the community. We did what was asked for, and these competitions are ongoing and the results will be announced over the next few weeks.
The Chair: Thank you, sir.
[Translation]
Senator Moncion: My question is for Ms. Giroux. Senator Mégie asked you about publications in French and English. You did mention that for the research envelope you received most of the time, when you applied in French, you published in French. Do you only publish in French, or if your publication…. That’s right, you publish in both languages.
Ms. Giroux: Yes.
Senator Moncion: So what you publish can be read by both francophones and anglophones.
Ms. Giroux: Yes, exactly. I think there are many researchers like me who alternate between French and English publications. You’ll see it in the reference list I mentioned — there are publications in English on francophones in minority situations, and also some in French.
Of course, we try to support scientific communication in French, and when certain journals allow for that, it’s fantastic. Some journals allow you to publish in French or English. However, they are few and far between, as we know, but at least, when abstracts are translated — if we can continue to encourage that — as the government does most of the time in both languages, it’s greatly appreciated.
Nonetheless, if a researcher publishes in French, they know they’re going to reach and be better understood by French-speaking colleagues and communities, which is precisely what will inform community members who search the internet and read in French.
However, we know this won’t be included in the impact factors and we know that we’ll have to adapt the publication into English. There are researchers like me who publish a lot in French because they’re proud to do research on French-speaking minorities. We also want to use our publications as a means of dissemination.
Senator Moncion: You live with the fact that you likely won’t be read by anglophones if your research is only published in French.
Ms. Giroux: Precisely.
Senator Moncion: Whereas the opposite is not necessarily true? A researcher who only publishes in English will be read by francophones and anglophones, while a researcher who only publishes in French will be read by francophones and bilingual people.
Ms. Giroux: Your question is quite interesting. I’m from Quebec City and I network with educators. It’s not true that all francophone educators and researchers are bilingual. Since I’m bilingual, I often find myself helping to translate and transfer information at meetings, and making sure that certain official documents have a French or English version and vice versa, because we have to try to help each other in both languages, no matter where we are in the country. It’s not easy, and we often have to make a choice, but I wouldn’t assume that French-speaking researchers necessarily understand everything in English publications.
Therefore, good practice means trying to have at least the abstracts published in both languages as far as publications are concerned, and I would say that official documents and documentation relevant to research in Canada in general should be translated into both languages. As I mentioned, researchers like me will switch from French to English to ensure that the information being disseminated is the same.
What you’re saying is very interesting. I think there may be more English speakers who don’t understand French in Canada, so clearly if we publish in French in a journal with no abstract available in English, anglophones won’t read us as much or won’t read us at all. Only the bilingual will read us.
We learn to cope with all that, but it certainly isn’t to our advantage.
The Chair: Thank you.
In conclusion, if the federal government were to invest heavily to help you do your work in your respective mandates with even greater impact, what would the priority be?
Mr. Baron, in conclusion, if you had to identify your priorities for addressing the issue of official language communities and minority services when receiving a large amount of funding, how would you allocate that money?
The same question also applies to you, Ms. Giroux.
Mr. Baron: That’s an excellent question. It’s not up to me to make those kinds of suggestions to the federal government, but I do want to point out that major investments have been made. The 2024 budget included a major investment in research for the three councils, and while it’s not my place to tell you where that money is going, I can emphasize that research relating to people in minority language situations is a priority. I can’t predict what will happen, but you’ll see that it will be a priority, and for good reason.
In addition, considerable investments have been made to strengthen French-language research through Canadian Heritage, with whom we work closely, as well as with the three granting councils and Acfas. In fact, I attended the Acfas gala last week. We’re always listening, because we want to do better, hence the need to stay in touch with Ms. Giroux and her colleagues — to determine how the money could best serve Canadians.
The Chair: Ms. Giroux, briefly, how would you invest your funds?
Ms. Giroux: Of course, I’ve given you seven points, and I think they are credible, but in terms of prioritizing, I think the first one would be active offer training. That is a skill. It’s not just saying “Hello, bonjour” and then stop training in active offer — it’s truly a skill that needs to be developed and practised. From a research standpoint, we also need to evaluate the training’s impact once it’s been implemented.
I would invest money into training future and current professionals and I’d help managers implement that training in universities and colleges and in practice settings. Then we could assess the impact of active supply education, including beneficiaries and emerging researchers too. That’s what we’re saying: We’ll soon be short of resources, because we don’t have enough bilingual professionals trained in minority situations. So we need to support minority training programs, because, as I explained in my advocacy document, it’s hard to achieve with the few resources we have. Training future professionals in an interprofessional way, in conjunction with research, will bring more researchers, and therefore more committee members to the CIHR, and they will be able to take over.
We are the future of research, but they are also the future professionals of the next generation, and we must nurture them. We’re very committed to the cause of training the next generation with GReFoPS. We believe in it, but we need support to make it happen. We need budget envelopes earmarked to help research on the minority situation in particular, with Acfas and other organizations, and we need to talk to each other more across the country about research and best practices.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Giroux and Mr. Baron, for your excellent presentations and enlightening answers.
I’d also like to thank my colleagues for being here and starting this very interesting conversation. This is our last meeting on this study. We will now begin the next stage, which is drafting the report.
Seeing no further items on the agenda, I thank you.
(The meeting is adjourned.)