 Hi everyone, welcome to our lightning talk on challenges and opportunities of OER at a bilingual Canadian university. Your presenters are Melanie Brunet, Open Education Librarian and Michelle Brown, Head, Learning and Student Success. We are both librarians at the University of Ottawa in Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1848, the University of Ottawa is located on the unceded ancestral land of the Algonquin people in the heart of Canada's capital city, Ottawa, Ontario. It is the largest bilingual French and English university in the world. It offers 550 undergraduate, masters, doctoral and professional programs. It provides courses and resources in both English and French, but it is not in equal proportion. There are about 42,000 students at the University of Ottawa. 70% of those students study in English, while only 30% of students study in French. Because of the relatively low number of Francophone students at the University, they are a linguistic minority within its walls as well as in Canada. This poses a challenge for the University, which is officially bilingual and has a mandate to promote and strengthen both the French language and Francophone culture. As much as possible, it is required to provide the same services and resources in both English and French. However, French language teaching and research resources like textbooks and databases are often more difficult to find, more expensive and in some disciplines non-existent. In 2019-2020, we tracked the cost of textbooks assigned in the first year of the highest enrollment undergraduate programs in each faculty at UOttawa. For all programs, it looks like it is more expensive to study in English than in French, but this is an oversimplification. The textbook market is much smaller in French, new additions don't come out as frequently and professors in French courses will turn to other options like print coursebacks, the library's digital course reserve or the learning management system to bring together parts of various resources instead of assigning a textbook that may not exist. It is also known that a portion of these assigned resources, even if they don't involve an extra cost for students in French courses, are in English. We will now speak to the gap in the availability of French language OER. Although OER as a concept has been around since 2002, it is still a movement dominated by the English language in Canada and elsewhere. In Canada, the provinces of Ontario and Quebec have invested in the creation of French language OER over the past few years, but a wide gap remains. The infrastructure of the internet on which OERs rely for creation, hosting, dissemination and use is English dominated. As of March 31, 2020, while English dominated with 25.9% of internet users, French accounted only for 3.3%. And the internet penetration by language is 77.5% for English, while only 35.2% for French. The uneven language distribution OER also follows the trend in scientific and academic publishing, where English is still the dominant language, in large part because university rankings take into account the number of articles published in prestigious journals and most of these are in English, perpetuating the imperative of publishing in English. The lack of OER in French also reflects the imbalance in commercial publishing. The market for French language learning resources is small compared to English. In 2016, Francophones represented 4.7% of the population in Ontario and 22.8% of the Canadian population. Internationally, in 2018, it was estimated that about 3.1% of the world population used French on a daily basis. Smaller markets mean smaller print runs, less investment in digital formats by publishers and a higher cost of production per unit. Fewer Francophone resources make it to publication in Canada and they rely on financial support from the federal and provincial governments. There is also a unique context for Francophones in Ontario which is underrepresented in the already small market for French language resources in Canada. Franco-Ontarians have their own dialect and history of struggles with the dominant English society to preserve the language and culture which are not reflected in textbooks from Quebec or France. So why are there fewer OERs in French? We suggest that tuition costs may be a factor in the use and development of OER. For instance, tuition fees are low in France, where the government heavily subsidizes public higher education. Tuition at the undergraduate level is 170 euros per year or around $250 Canadian. In Canada, Quebec is behind an OER production compared to Ontario and British Columbia. It also has some of the lowest tuition fees in the country, starting at around $2,600 per year compared to $5,400 in Ontario and $4,300 in BC. We also suggest that approaches to copyright could have an impact. French-speaking countries often have a more protective view of copyright, which in French is called droit d'auteur. The word itself focuses on the right of the author, not the right to copy. International law is the legal tradition in most French-speaking regions and it does not have fair use or fair dealing as exceptions. It sets the stage for knowledge cultures that are resistant to open. All of these factors contribute to the gap in available French language OER and represent significant equity challenges for bilingual institutions. For example, the English course for linear algebra with about 1,300 students annually uses a free textbook. The same course taught in French requires about 630 students to purchase a $120 textbook. The consequences of this inequity can be profound and far-reaching. The UN and other prominent international governing bodies have declared the right to speak and learn in one's mother tongue a universal human right. Local languages, especially minority languages, transmit cultures, values and traditional knowledge. In this way, French language OER play a critical role in maintaining equitable access to information, culture and knowledge for those who wish to learn in French. A lack of access to French language learning resources puts increased pressure on Francophone learners to fall back on making do with English textbooks and articles. This may further contribute to the assimilation of a linguistic minority group into the dominant culture and language. Despite the many challenges faced at our institutions surrounding OER, there are many opportunities to promote awareness, adoption and creation of OER. In its latest strategic plan, U Ottawa committed to promoting and rewarding the development of affordable learning materials and developing OERs in French. U Ottawa also endorsed an action plan for the Francophonie that clearly identified the gap in French language textbook availability and open access publications. While OERs were not mentioned in the action plan, they were presented as a promising solution during the consultations. Earlier this year, the Open and Affordable Learning Materials Working Group, sponsored by the Library, Academic Affairs and Student Affairs, released its report pointing to the need for dedicated funding and initiatives to support the creation of OERs in French, not just translating what exists in English. Since 2020, the University of Ottawa Library has awarded a total of $35,000 to seven projects, including the following, meant to support the creation of OER, especially in French, to start addressing that gap. The grant is supporting a series of French language podcasts currently under development on legal analysis, specifically for the French common law program at U Ottawa, one of only two universities in Canada to teach common law in that language. Focusing on the creation of OERs in French makes it possible to bypass the challenging conditions dictated by a limited commercial market for French language educational material. We can hope that the resulting OERs would be more representative of French speaking minorities in Canada, especially if they are co-created with students. This co-creation with students taking courses in French would contribute to going beyond an uncritical translation of an existing English OER or using it as is. As outlined by Hodgkinson Williams and Trotter in the context of OER and Open Educational Practices in the Global South, addressing cultural and linguistic injustices in a transformative way means remixing critically in a manner that engages with and challenges hegemonic perspectives and creating our own OER. Thank you so much for your interest in our lightning talk.