Science and Research Committee on Feb. 7th, 2023

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Corey Tochor]

With that, we'll move on to MP Blanchette-Joncas for six minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to welcome the witnesses who are here today to help us with our study.

Mr. Wood, thank you for being here in person to talk about the eBird program. I was proud to learn that the eBird program was inspired by a Quebec initiative, the survey of bird populations of Quebec, which is a database set up in 1975 by Jacques Larivée, a visionary ornithologist. It fills me with pride to see how his efforts have borne fruit.

I have also learned that the eBird program was, at its inception, a small traditional citizen science project that has exploded and become a worldwide collaborative enterprise. I congratulate you. It is absolutely extraordinary, because we can see in concrete terms how citizen science can bring a lot of benefits to various communities.

How long has the eBird database been in existence?

[Christopher Wood]

In 2002 eBird began.

As you noted, there have been several different areas where the idea of using citizens to track birds emerged. Our partners in Quebec have been some of the most creative and exciting groups to work with, in large part because the way they're thinking about building community and leadership structures to manage data quality, and to engage new people in the collection of citizen science data, has really transformed how we think about gathering things.

One thing I'd like to highlight is that, by integrating large-scale projects, you're able to bring people in from Quebec, Chile or India, who are able to share their experiences. We have a Slack channel that involves regional leadership. My job is not to set any of the policies. Those are set and managed by local review teams. There's the same balance in citizen science that we have in government. When decisions are made at a local level, to what extent do they need to be coordinated at the federal level?

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Wood.

You state that your program has been in existence since 2002. You mentioned in your opening statement that you receive federal funding. When did the funding start exactly and how much funding do you receive annually from the federal government?

[Christopher Wood]

I think we received a total of 14 different National Science Foundation grants, at least, to support various aspects. The very first funding we received for eBird was a National Science Foundation grant for informal science education. It began as an education-focused initiative.

It has transformed. Now, most of the funding we get is in the area of machine learning and statistics, and the interface of those two. Part of the reason for that is that the fundamental challenges in analyzing epidemiological data are very similar to the ones we're trying to work out in citizen science data. I spoke about this a bit before. You basically have a sensor network, where you may have doctors or birdwatchers who are reporting in slightly different rates. You're trying to understand the bias in both of those—both from your sensor and then what the truth is.

Machine learning has a lot of very good applications in terms of neural network models to not necessarily understand the drivers of those, where statistical frameworks are—

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

We have to continue, Mr. Wood, but I thank you for your answer.

Does the federal government require that you use both of Canada's official languages, i.e., French and English, in all your communications as well as on your website?

[Christopher Wood]

The federal government did not. That's a best practice we adopted.

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

If I understand correctly, you are eligible to receive federal funding, but there is no requirement attached to the funding to use both official languages in all your communications.

[Christopher Wood]

In the United States, from the National Science Foundation.... No, I'm not aware of that.

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

I am talking about Canada, Mr. Wood. We are here in the Canadian Parliament and my question is about the federal government.

[Christopher Wood]

I'm sorry. When I was talking about the National Science Foundation, I meant the National Science Foundation in the United States.

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

I will repeat the question. The federal government gives you grants. You said there were approximately 14 of them. Are those grants from the Canadian federal government?

[Christopher Wood]

No, I'm sorry. It's not the federal government in Canada but in the United States.

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

Mr. Wood, I am speaking to you from Canada's House of Commons. I will therefore put my question to you in another fashion: do you receive funding from the Canadian federal government?

[Christopher Wood]

No.

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

Alright.

There is a Quebec initiative, and some local organizations have taken it up in other regions in Canada, as you said. I'm trying to see how we can ensure that the scientific community pools its data.

I see that the eBird app is available in 27 languages. When I look at your communications, however, they are not always in both official languages, which is worrisome to me.

How do you think we can mobilize the francophone community when your communications are almost entirely in English or the French versions are incomplete?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Corey Tochor]

You have 30 seconds. Go ahead, please.

[Christopher Wood]

That's a very good question.

The way that we work, the small team we have at Cornell is not able to do this, so we work with Quebec Birds. As the partner, Quebec Birds—Québec Oiseaux—is really leading those efforts and is every bit as responsible as we are for any of the success we've had.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Corey Tochor]

Thank you, MP Blanchette-Joncas.

We now move to MP Cannings for six minutes.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you. It's great to have these witnesses before us. For full disclosure, as I mentioned in the last meeting, I come from this background of citizen science. In fact, I worked for 13 years or so with Cornell on eBird. I was in charge of managing it in Canada. With Geoff in Audubon I was managing the Christmas bird count in Canada for a long time—I forget exactly how long. It's great to have you all here to talk about the importance of citizen science and its successes that we talked about.

I can assure Monsieur Blanchette-Joncas that everything Birds Canada and Québec Oiseaux do is in both official languages. Those groups, which are Cornell's partners, do get money from the federal Government of Canada. That's one of the requirements, and we're happy to do that. We have to do that when we're dealing with citizen science and have to communicate properly with citizens.

I just want to touch on one thing. We've heard a lot in this and in other studies this committee has undertaken about the concept of open data, and how many of the big projects of all sorts around the world in science are moving to an open-science, open-data concept.

Perhaps I can ask all three witnesses this question: What is your policy regarding the data you produce?

Maybe I'll start with Mr. Wood and then move on.

[Christopher Wood]

All eBird data are open and accessible, basically. There's a balance. It's not considered pure open-source, because we do ask for what your research affiliation is and what the purpose of the data is. That helps us, then, when we're able to come to meetings like this and others to understand the use of the data. Anybody is able to access the data once they answer those questions.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. LeBaron.

[Geoffrey S. LeBaron]

Audubon manages the Christmas bird count in essentially the same way. We freely give data to, essentially, anyone who asks for it. For the same reasons we do ask for a form to be filled out so that we understand their thinking of what their project will be and how they intend on using it. We ask them to let us know if a paper comes out on the result of the data that they get from us and to give us a copy or a link to that final study. It's free and available.

A lot of the data they can pull right from the website themselves and we don't even know about it—or at least not easily. We don't track it on a day-to-day basis. For larger inquiries we supply the data to researchers who have their specific questions on anything from one particular species in Quebec to the entire database throughout the Americas.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you.