Science and Research committee  Thank you. I think one of the big problems is that since 2014, only 4% of discovery grant applications, for example, were made in French. As well, only 8% of applicants reported that French was their preferred language of correspondence. I think this is not a good situation.

Science and Research committee  I'll start first if you want. We're always checking for biases and distortions in the review process. I don't know how familiar you are with the discovery grant system. We have hundreds of committee members evaluating them. We had 3,000 applications this year and we awarded over 2,000 grants.

Science and Research committee  We run the community college integration program for the three councils. That's dedicated to colleges, polytechnics and CEGEPs. It has been growing quite a bit over the years. In fact, it's the program that's grown the most over the past 10 years. It's still insufficient, given the demand, but we are in continual contact with the stakeholders to create conditions that favour the sort of delivery that is appropriate for that sector.

Science and Research committee  Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. I am pleased to be here in my capacity as president of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, commonly referred to as NSERC. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today, alongside my colleagues from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Science and Research committee  Yes.

Science and Research committee  We're focused pretty much on university-based researchers and their students. I think you have to develop best practices that apply to a whole ecosystem regardless of where the money comes from. There are conflict of interest forms. I am a professor at UBC and we fill out these conflict of interest forms.

Science and Research committee  I believe that the researchers made plans to mitigate security problems and that was enough. As for the 4%, for some of the applications, we could not determine whether it was enough to ensure the security of the research. We then turned those files over to our colleagues in the security agencies.

Science and Research committee  We think our preliminary review is sufficiently thorough. I will ask my colleague to give you a more detailed answer.

Science and Research committee  Yes, we'd be happy to.

Science and Research committee  What was it they say in Star Trek? It's days and not years.

Science and Research committee  We're waiting impatiently.

Science and Research committee  I have mentioned that we will always be tested. Let's not be naive. One of the issues here was that the whole ecosystem was extremely naive. I think our government and the folks who work there are really doing an excellent job of trying to mitigate the risk and to make it foolproof, but it is never perfect.

Science and Research committee  That's right. They were referred to the experts.

Science and Research committee  Yes, that's because we can only use public information, things that are available on the web. You can learn a lot about entities just by looking things up. It's surprising.

Science and Research committee  I think my colleague might want to comment.