Science and Research committee  There are mechanisms and they are not complicated, I think.

Science and Research committee  Yes, that's true of every community. Everybody knows that, sociologically speaking, there are no homogeneous communities. They don't exist. Let's take Canadians as an example. Some Canadians vote for the Liberals, others for the Conservatives, and some don't vote at all. There are all kinds of people.

Science and Research committee  I think we need a concrete mechanism, not vague metaphors about collaborating. I'll give you a very simple example. Peer review is done in science double-blind. Why is it double-blind? When you send in a paper, you want it to be evaluated as if it's good, and you don't want cognitive bias to move it in a bad direction.

Science and Research committee  My view is that this too is based on confusion. There is no hierarchy of knowledge. Knowledge is true or false. In the 18th century, British and French physicists argued over whether the earth was perfectly spherical or flattened at the poles or the equator. There were two theories, and hence a conflict.

Science and Research committee  The term "probative data" is widely used these days. It's cutting edge. Probative data is essential. What these words mean is that the accuracy of the information has to be checked. If that is not done, money will be wasted and it won't work. If it happens to work—so much the better if it does—verification will come afterwards.

Science and Research committee  No, there isn't. To talk about knowledge, you have to begin by establishing that's what it really is. For example, one hears the expression "traditional knowledge". It's important to clearly understand, epistemologically speaking, that just because something is traditional does not mean it's necessarily true.

Science and Research committee  Thank you for your invitation. This is probably the first time a committee like yours has addressed science and research. The impact of incorporating traditional knowledge into science-based government policies rests on a proper understanding of what ultimately amounts to the philosophy of science and epistemology.

Science and Research committee  No. In my opinion, the primary cause of this decline in the social sciences and humanities is the pressure toward so-called internationalization, which is conflated with anglicizing. I could give you examples in the case of France, and even of Quebec. People decide that an article published in English in the United States is surely better than another published in French.

Science and Research committee  You keep saying "publication". You know that in my opinion, in science, the question of publication has been settled. In the case of teaching, however, professors hired at francophone universities must give courses in French. If a student pays tuition fees to a francophone university but their chemistry or physics course is taught in English, that is a false representation.

Science and Research committee  I believe that is the case. If we ask researchers in the social sciences and humanities whether they publish in the journals, we have to analyze, sociologically and empirically, what the people themselves do. Personally, I publish papers in both French journals and Quebec journals, for example.

Science and Research committee  If we want to help the diffusion of the social sciences and humanities in Canada, the first thing we have to do is put a basic, stable thing in place for Érudit. Érudit was created 25 years ago. I was sitting on the board of SSHRC, by the way, and the English Canadians were saying, “Why do we need Érudit?”

Science and Research committee  I have always taken the same position on that subject: the impact factor is not well understood. The article gets confused with the journal; that has been proven. It is connected with Lotka's law and is very simple to understand. I have made tonnes of speeches in the world. Often, scientists do not understand and review committees have to be told that they are prohibited from using impact factors, including the h index, which is false, since it is used differently by Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science.

Science and Research committee  In social sciences and humanities, it is the same thing. When the review committees at the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, for example, see an article about Indigenous people that is published in the Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française, they have to know that that is an excellent journal in French.

Science and Research committee  No. Personally, I don't believe in that. Science is based on excellence and on peer review. We just have to make sure that the peers have the tools to do the review properly. The choice of the language of publication is up to the researcher, based on their publishing strategy. When I work on Brother Marie-Victorin, I write in French in Quebec.

Science and Research committee  Very simply, it's the fact that once you have acquired a certain visibility, you will be given more quality than in fact you have. I think it's the case for English. I'll be very frank. We talk about “rent”. You can have rent on petroleum, like Alberta, and you can just sit on the rent.