Science and Research Committee on Feb. 2nd, 2023

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Corey Tochor]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 27 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research. Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House Order of June 23, 2022. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(i) and the motion adopted by the committee on Monday, September 26, 2022, we are beginning our study of citizen scientists.

I would like to take a few moments to make a few comments for the benefit of the witnesses and members. Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those taking part by video conference, click on your microphone icon to activate your mike, and please mute yourself when you are not speaking. For interpretation, for those on Zoom you have the choice at the bottom of your screen of floor, English, or French. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.

I remind you that all comments should be addressed through the chair. For members in the room, if you wish to speak, please raise your hand. For members on Zoom, please use the “raise hand” function. The clerk and I will manage the speaking order as best we can, and we appreciate your patience and understanding in this regard.

In accordance with our routine motion, I am informing the committee that all witnesses have completed their prior connection tests in advance of the meeting.

I'd like to welcome our two guests today. Online we have Dr. Nemer, and in person we have Dr. Quirion.

We're going to start with opening statements from each witness, and we're going to go in the room to start off.

Dr. Quirion, I welcome you to take the floor for five minutes. At the tail end of the five minutes, if you could attempt to look up, I will try to get your attention to speed it up if you're approaching that magical five-minute mark.

With that, I'll turn the floor over to our first witness.

[Dr. Rémi Quirion, Chief Scientist of Quebec, Fonds de recherche du Québec]

Mr. Chair, members of the committee, colleagues and friends, I am happy to be back with you. Thank you for the invitation.

Today, I have chosen a somewhat unique and possibly slightly provocative angle to talk to you about participatory science and citizen engagement, so I am going to give a very brief summary of the initiatives undertaken by my office and the Fonds de recherche du Québec in this area. I will focus on three of our programs: Audace, Dialogue, and Engagement. I will be speaking mainly about the Engagement program.

One of the main triggers that prompted us to develop our citizen science strategy relates to disinformation, misinformation and fake news. I have been very concerned about these phenomena for several years, so it started well before the COVID‑19 pandemic. Of course, it was all exacerbated with the pandemic.

How do we combat fake news and disinformation? How do we counteract them? It is not simple, as we all know, but it is truly essential for our democracies.

A number of studies show that increasing scientific literacy, that is, providing life-long science education, is one of the most effective measures for combating disinformation. We must therefore urgently increase scientific literacy in Canada. We are all working on this together, but we must do a lot better.

We should also be offering our fellow citizens of all ages better education about social media and how they work, so that everyone is really able to choose the most reliable sites. The fact that a site is at the top of the list of results when you do a Google search does not necessarily mean it is the best one. It is therefore very important to have better education on all aspects of this.

So how can citizen engagement and participatory science help to combat disinformation? What approach do we use at the office of the Chief Scientist of Quebec? Our Engagement program has existed for about three years and invites our fellow citizens to submit ideas for research projects to us. We then meet with the people who have proposed them, and we put them in touch with researchers who are interested in the subject in question and have expertise in the field. Then they train a small team that will work together to develop a much more detailed version of the project, something that often takes six to 12 months.

Next, the project is evaluated by a peer committee that includes members of the public. For the projects that are funded, we grant funding on the order of $50,000 over two years, and the researchers and individual members of the public work together to ensure that the project produces results. The way we build science and develop our arguments, the advancements, setbacks and uncertainties—it is all very important, increases scientific literacy, and helps to combat disinformation and fake news.

One of the primary objectives of the Engagement program is better understanding of the scientific approach. Participants in the program are very proud of their projects and become valuable spokespersons for explaining science, research and scientific data where they live: in their families, in their communities, and, very often, in the media and to you, our members of Parliament.

So it is one small step, but it helps us to advance our battle against disinformation and the lack of scientific literacy in Quebec. We hope to be able to ensure that over the coming years, programs like this will be developed all over Canada.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Corey Tochor]

Thank you so much for your testimony today.

Now we will go online and hear from Dr. Nemer.

[Dr. Mona Nemer, Chief Science Advisor, Office of the Chief Science Advisor]

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for giving me the opportunity to discuss with you this important subject today.

As a society we find ourselves today renegotiating many of our systems and institutions that were affected by the trials of the past three years. Going forward, we need to consider citizen science as an integral part of our strategies for empowering individuals and communities, for building trust in our institutions and for sustaining our democracy.

Citizen science, which is also called participatory research and which is a collaborative approach to research between public volunteers and professionals, operates in a variety of disciplines with a common value being that it opens up the scientific enterprise to people beyond the professional communities.

In the past 10 years alone, citizen science has helped to make advancement in several fields, including space, the environment, agriculture and health. The discovery of five new exoplanets, achievement of the first crowdsourced redesign of a protein widely used in synthetic chemistry, help in designing ways to prevent the COVID virus from entering cells and the discovery of entirely new aspects of the earth's magnetic field are examples of things to which citizen science has contributed.

Clearly, participatory research can be enormously beneficial for science. It can help us meet our data needs, support multidisciplinary collaboration and promote open science objectives by encouraging public involvement. But it can also be enormously beneficial for individuals, communities and society as a whole.

By opening up science to non-professionals, we can enhance science literacy and improve public understanding of the evidence used to make policies. We can help to equip people with the tools they need to identify and resist misinformation and make informed decisions about their lives and their communities.

Around the world, countries and jurisdictions are adopting and supporting citizen science initiatives, and I salute the work that is being carried out in Quebec by my colleague Rémi Quirion.

Both the U.S. and the European Union currently fund major projects. In fact, since 2017, the U.S. has had a Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Act, which aims to promote innovation through open and voluntary scientific collaboration. Australia, too, has implemented a citizen science association. Germany has created a federally funded and centralized platform to promote it. The Netherlands implemented a process to facilitate the input of citizens and scientists in the Dutch research agenda, and Belgium has done something similar.

These are all very promising initiatives that are helping to connect people around the world to their communities, environment, and the science and innovation enterprise. Here at home, we have some citizen science initiatives, both within and outside of the federal government, and they are doing great things.

The federal citizen science portal currently lists 55 projects across the country, from Abeilles citoyennes, which collects data on pollinator species in Quebec’s agricultural regions, to the Colony B online game in which players grow and identify diverse clusters of bacteria that contribute to research on the human microbiome.

Within the federal government, the Public Health Agency is engaging people through FluWatchers, an initiative in which volunteers help to track influenza and COVID‑19 in Canada.

And Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is supporting Canada’s first Indigenous-led living lab. This laboratory brings farmers, Indigenous people and scientists together to define what the future of healthy and sustainable farm ecosystems can look like.

Building on these projects, colleagues at Health Canada are leading a multidisciplinary interdepartmental initiative reflected in Canada's fifth national action plan on open government. The aim is to promote citizen science through a framework that supports capacity building, as well as the required governance and infrastructure.

Canada would be well served to introduce citizen science early in school curricula. It is an effective way to raise scientific awareness and training in an inclusive manner, as well as encourage greater participation. Doing so would also be in keeping with the 2019 G7 science advisors’ recommendation that countries rethink their scientific education and equip students to be able to undertake either participatory or professional research later on.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Corey Tochor]

Dr. Nemer, thank you so much, but we're over our time allotment. I appreciate what you've shared so far, and we'll have an opportunity to expand on that a little bit once we get into the questions from our members.

First off, we have our six-minute round. To start off, from the Conservatives, we have MP Lobb.

Mr. Lobb, you have the floor.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Thanks very much.

My first question is for Mr. Quirion.

What is the potential, in your mind or in your vision, for citizen scientists?

[Dr. Rémi Quirion]

I think there are a lot of opportunities there.

We're lucky, I'll say, in Canada—in Quebec, in my case. There is a lot of interest in science, how science is built, from our citizens. Compared to some other countries, there is a lot of interest, so it's a matter of connecting, making connections with them, of academics in universities, in colleges and in the private sector linking with citizens and asking them what they think. Often, they have great suggestions, great ideas. We get a lot of projects. Every time we have a project competition in environment, in health, in arts and culture....

They say, for example, “There's a lot of blue algae in the lake. We did not used to see that. Why is that? Can we work with scientists on that?” Then citizen scientists, they do the project like that. In Montreal, women on the street, homeless women, started a research project to try to help these women so that they could get back to a bit more of a normal life.

I think there are a lot of opportunities. The key, for me, is to treat them as equals. It's not someone like me with a Ph.D. above them and they work, in a sense, for me. No, they are really equal, codesigners of the project. That's very critical.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Again—and if I missed this in your statement, I apologize—from a funding standpoint, across Canada, what would you say the amount of investment is in these types of projects?

[Dr. Rémi Quirion]

I don't know it for the whole of Canada. It's still small. When we started to think about the program, one of the things was that we need to give some money for support that is enough so that they can do the project with the scientist, the collaboration scientist. However, also, often many of them don't have much revenue, so we also need to support them in that, because sometimes they will take a few days off or they are a partner in a clinical study. We have to support them.

In Quebec, at the moment, it's a few million—about $3 million a year—that we spend on Fonds de recherche du Québec. On the national scene, I don't know. Maybe my colleague Mona would know more than I, but it's still small. As Mona said, I think in the U.S. and the U.K. there's more of a longer tradition, I'll say, of citizen science. If there's one thing we need to keep in mind and learn from the pandemic, it is that citizens can be a part of helping the whole community.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

I'm sure one of the things that's a frustration for a citizen scientist.... If I think back to my area, which is a rural area, there are a lot of naturalists and farmers and so forth who have lived on the farm their entire lives or they've been near a green area, and they may have a very sharp knowledge of different things, whether it's rain patterns, weather patterns, trees, crops, frost, whatever it is. They may be a lot sharper than some of the university students or researchers, but their knowledge isn't peer-reviewed.

Is this what you're saying: that you can take the knowledge of a group of farmers in a region, couple them with somebody, and be able to have a peer-reviewed document? Is that the idea?

[Dr. Rémi Quirion]

Eventually.

Basically, the key thing.... The first time we launched the call, we did that too quickly. They submitted proposals, and we linked them with scientists. Then they started the project.

Now they submit the project, and for about six months, sometimes a year, they interact with the scientific community to express their knowledge, to explain their knowledge to the academic community. They build the program together. They work together. If there is a publication at the end, both of them are part of it. It's not just the scientist. You give them reward, in a sense, and they are very proud.

I must say that every time we support teams like that, the scientific community, of course, is happy about it, but I'm more impressed by the citizen who became.... They'd say, “I had an idea. I had some knowledge. They listened to me, and now we work together,” and they continue. After the end of the project, they continue to work together. That's something we need to nurture in the future.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Yes, I can think back a long time ago in the field of crop farming and no-till drilling, and using certain types of, I guess, non-traditional farming practices 40 years ago. It was a group of farmers not far from where I grew up that worked with the University of Guelph and perfected no-till drilling for crops in southwestern Ontario, I would say.

I would also say that I can see where there could be potential for this in the areas along our Great Lakes and other watercourses throughout the country. My neighbour, for example, goes out every day. He represents the Lake Huron coastal conservation area and he takes the temperature of the lake. He reports that back and they put that in. They know roughly where he is and they can monitor it. I can see how there will be tremendous advantages as they accumulate these data points.

Is this something you would see as a benefit across the country?

[Dr. Rémi Quirion]

Yes, for sure.

I'm coming from a very small village in the Lac-Mégantic area—Lac-Drolet. It's not me. I was not involved in any of the proposals or peer reviews or whatever. Lac-Drolet had an engagement, a grant, citizen-proposed, in terms of the quality of the water in the lake. Now there are about 25 of them in a small village. They're working on that and take samples of the water and the temperature of the water, and all of that, every day. It's extremely useful for the Ministry of the Environment, for example, to have that.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Corey Tochor]

Thank you very much.

We're out of time, but thank you for those rounds of questions and answers.

We're moving on to the Liberals with MP Collins. You have the floor.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Welcome back to our witnesses.

I would like to start with Dr. Nemer. Your opening sentence caught my attention as it relates to your comments around citizen science and sustaining our democracy. Actually, I should reference that Dr. Quirion mentioned disinformation and misinformation in his opening. We've heard a lot of information from past witnesses in other studies about disinformation and information floating through, of course, social media—where else would we find that—with an attempt to undermine not just science but public health initiatives and information that has helped us get through the pandemic.

I was a member of the board of health on my municipal council before I arrived here. I experienced those comments and the push-back to public health professionals who were trying to assist, whether it was on the use of masks, the social distancing or the benefits of getting the vaccine. We've seen this constant trend, since the beginning of the pandemic, to try to undermine the efforts of the science that helped us get through the pandemic. Scientific initiatives have helped over the last 30 to 40 years to get us to where we are today.

With that preamble, Dr. Nemer, I want you to further elaborate on how citizen science helps us with sustaining our democracy. I think those were your comments in your first sentence.

[Dr. Mona Nemer]

Thank you very much for this question.

Citizens make decisions every day. That, of course, affects our institutions and our democracy. It's very important that they be able to judge the integrity, validity and quality of the information, and the quality of the evidence. We can also put all of these into the sentence on the scientific method, which is going about in a rigorous, analytical manner proving or disproving your hypothesis.

This, in many ways, is what citizen science also teaches you. It's not only about gathering information and data. You have to do it in a way that's consistent and is going to end up being representative. If you generalize conclusions, then you have to be sure that this is actually reflective of everything.

It's all of these things that you learn to question that will help to tell you if something is true information or disinformation. You're going to be able to question the integrity, the source and the method by which the information is being disseminated and has been gathered.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thanks, Dr. Nemer.

Dr. Quirion, can I ask you the same question, please, along the same lines?

[Dr. Rémi Quirion]

Maybe I could add a bit. I talked about scientific literacy. Certainly, one way is to increase scientific literacy all across Canada. I think we saw that with the pandemic.

It's very important to do that from day one, almost in primary school. Young kids are very curious. They want to learn things, so to explain a bit—of course, with simple words—what science is and the fun of science.... It's not only that it's hard, tough and difficult, but that it's fun to do science. You keep doing that with teenagers, because at that point, it's a bit more challenging with some of them. There are some who believe in that and who have fun in science, even though they find it hard, so finding ways to interest them in science....

Throughout life, I think it's the duty of government—local, provincial and national—to offer opportunities to increase scientific literacy here in Canada and, I hope, all over the world. It's key to democracy, I think.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you for that answer.

My next question would be for Dr. Nemer. I think you referenced some other examples internationally of funding models and strategies that have been used by different levels of government around citizen science.

I'm accustomed to—if I use my hometown as an example—in Hamilton, dealing with the Hamilton Naturalists’ Club, which has been around for over 100 years. I know that they're always competing for a patchwork of government grants and trusts that might make monies available for citizen science initiatives. It seems like we, maybe, don't have as much of a formal process as those that you referenced in your opening statement.

Can you compare and contrast the funding models that we have here in Canada and how we're supporting citizen science, versus those that you've listed in the U.S. and in Europe?

[Dr. Mona Nemer]

I'll say that we're still at an embryonic stage in terms of supporting citizen science. We've historically supported investigator-initiated research in universities, in government departments, of course, and in the private sector. We're starting to include community-based research and community-led research.

I think that we have to put in place the platforms that we need to do this matchmaking. We need to properly fund the human resources that go with this. There are field trips, computing and data analysis. There's the time of the professionals who are engaged with the communities, with the citizens and with the population in general.

We need to go at it in a more systematic manner than we have so far. It can be encouraged as part of much of the targeted research that we do, or just crowdsourcing. Try to solve a problem, see where the best ideas come from and open it up, as well, to citizens—people who are not in formal settings, but who are collaborating or are prepared to collaborate with more formal training, if you want.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Corey Tochor]

Thank you so much for the testimony.

Thank you, Mr. Collins, for the questions.

Now we're moving on to the Bloc. I'll cede the floor to MP Blanchette-Joncas.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Today we are lucky and very pleased to have the Chief Scientist of Quebec and the Chief Science Advisor of Canada with us. Welcome.

Mr. Quirion, you talked about the importance of increasing scientific literacy among the public. Can you explain how initiatives like the Réseau francophone international en conseil scientifique, which you were in charge of launching last fall— congratulations, that is a great accomplishment—can contribute to the objective of citizen science?

[Dr. Rémi Quirion]

Thank you for your question.

The objective of the Réseau francophone international en conseil scientifique is to expand the capacities for giving scientific advice to elected representatives and senior officials all over the francophone world, in the francophone countries of Europe and Africa and in Canada, including Quebec, of course. By expanding those capacities and the connections between the academic world and elected representatives and senior officials, we are indirectly facilitating everything associated with citizen science or participatory science.

Elected representatives, parliamentarians, will hear more about science and scientific advice. Since they will be familiar with citizen science, they will be able to discuss it with the people in their ridings, to find out what should be done.

In addition to Quebec and Canada, we would also like to have comparisons at the international level, in particular regarding climate change, sustainable development and the global pandemic we are all familiar with.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Quirion.

How does the development of francophone science diplomacy worldwide benefit the general public?

In the fall of 2022, as I mentioned a little earlier, there were a lot of promising initiatives during the second annual Semaine mondiale de la Francophonie scientifique, including the manifesto for francophone science diplomacy signed by the members of the Agence universitaire de la francophonie. Quebec and Canada have signed the manifesto, of course.

What can you tell us about the benefits that these efforts can bring about?

[Dr. Rémi Quirion]

We are used to talking about diplomacy of a more political or cultural nature, but science knows no borders. We work in teams all over the world. For example, the Palestinians worked alongside the Israelis on CERN's particle accelerator in Geneva. So science diplomacy consists of using science and researchers to open doors all over the world, the francophone world in this case. Science diplomacy is now part of the vocabulary of my authorities in Quebec, and I am very proud of that.