Science and Research Committee on Feb. 16th, 2023

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Corey Tochor]

Good morning, everybody. I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 31 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 and the motion adopted by the committee on Monday, September 26, 2022, we are continuing our study of citizen scientists.

I would like to make a few comments for the witnesses and members.

There is 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 everyone that all comments should be addressed through the chair. In accordance with our routine motion, I am informing the committee that all witnesses have completed their required connection tests in advance of the meeting.

I welcome our witnesses. I will allow each of you to have a-five minute opening statement. I will do my best to give you notice when you're coming down to that last few seconds, and if you can try to keep it at five minutes, that will help us with the clock management.

To our MPs here, due to scheduling of House business at the end, we will be managing the clock a little more tightly than usual so that we have time to take care of some in camera business today.

With that, I will let Dr. Kerr begin for our first opening statement of five minutes.

[Dr. Jeremy Kerr, University Research Chair in Macroecology and Conservation, Department of Biology, University of Ottawa, As an Individual]

Thank you very much.

It's a true pleasure to be able to join you today, in person this time, in the sacred spaces of Parliament and from the unceded territory of the Algonquin people. I'm sad that our friend, the Honourable Kirsty Duncan, is unable to be here today, and I wish her a speedy recovery.

I am chair of biology at the University of Ottawa, where I also hold a research chair. I'm past president of the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution, and I'm a long-standing member of NSERC.

Like each of you, I care deeply about making a difference for others. I mostly try to do this through science. I've spent most of my research career working to understand how human activities affect biodiversity.

Everyone here will know that we are in the midst of a human-induced mass extinction, the likes of which we have not seen since the end of the age of the dinosaurs. This time, our own activities are the cause. To solve this wicked problem, we require an “all hands on deck” approach to understand how biodiversity is changing.

In recognition of that imperative, a post-doc on my research team, Maxim Larrivée, and I created eButterfly at the University of Ottawa 12 years ago and launched it simultaneously in French and English. Why butterflies? Because they are an indicator for how other species are doing and because they are so beautiful they can inspire the most cynical among us. eButterfly now uses artificial intelligence to help identify species from digital photos that anyone can take with a cellphone anywhere on earth.

Does such data make a difference? A few years ago, I set out to test and answer this question.

Over the past 130 years, professional scientists collected 300,000 observations of 297 different butterfly species across Canada's vast land mass. Using eButterfly, citizen scientists doubled that number in seven years. These volunteers found species in places overlooked by professional scientists and sometimes detected them at times of the year that were either earlier or later than we had previously thought possible.

The real magic happens when you combine both citizen and professional science data. That approach provides a much more complete picture of how Canadian species are responding to human impacts. In other words, citizen science data transforms our understanding of how global changes affect Canadian biodiversity, and now we know enough to take critical steps to protect species and their ecosystems. Such strategies figure prominently in the COP 15 Montreal agreement to conserve biodiversity, including to protect 30% of the world's surface by 2030 and to halt and reverse nature loss and species decline by 2050.

How will we test whether such policies are actually working? We must take a global “all hands on deck” approach, combining professional and citizen science and honouring the distinct ecological knowledge of the world's indigenous peoples. Big science needs big data, and citizen science helps us get that vital ingredient.

Canada is already using such data to help monitor the state of its threatened species, including monarch butterflies through eButterfly's mission monarch project. There's a great need to expand monitoring efforts to include other groups of species and to address other kinds of problems, but just as importantly, scientists must be willing to throw open the doors of their ivory towers to embrace more inclusive ways of measuring the world we all share.

The rapid growth in citizen science programs around the world and in Canada suggests that more scientists are willing to do just that, but we must guard against repeating the mistakes of the past, which might cause scientists to work with an unrepresentative few in our diverse country.

In the future, I hope citizen science programs will touch everyone's lives, supporting indigenous communities in their own languages and helping to inspire and include people who are under-represented in our scientific organizations.

I hope governments in Canada will ask how citizen science programs can help to make the kinds of differences for others that motivated many of us to pursue our careers in science.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Corey Tochor]

Thank you so much.

Now we are moving on to Ms. Lewis for five minutes.

[Nicola Lewis, Chief Executive Officer, Kids Brain Health Network]

Good morning, and thank you to the committee for inviting me to speak with you today.

My name is Nicky Lewis and I am the chief executive officer of Kids Brain Health Network.

Kids Brain Health is a Canadian national network that puts science to work for children with neurodisabilities and their families. These are lifelong conditions characterized by impairments in cognition, communication, behaviour and motor skills resulting from abnormal brain development. We support the development of cutting-edge research and the implementation, scale and spread of evidence-based solutions.

With funding from the federal government’s networks of centres of excellence program and equally matched funding from many other partners, we have invested more than $77 million into over 200 projects and research initiatives so that kids with disabilities and their families can live their best lives.

Kids Brain Health’s focus is directed upon proven solutions in early identification, early interventions, effective treatments and family support.

Today, I will speak with you about one of our programs. It is the family engagement in research program, which is better known as the FER program. FER recognizes parents and caregivers as equal partners in all phases of the research process, from research question design to data collection and analysis, and disseminating the findings into practice. FER is funded by Kids Brain Health and co-led by parent leaders and pediatric health service researchers at CanChild centre for child disability research at McMaster University.

I would like to introduce, in the audience, Dr. Andrea Cross, assistant professor from CanChild, and Ms. Connie Putterman, a parent partner. They are two of the codevelopers and coleaders of the FER program.

The FER program includes an evolving suite of training courses, knowledge mobilization and mentorship initiatives. It is led by citizen partners and researchers, and it is rooted in the shared values of co-creation, collaboration and respect for the different types of knowledge and experiences.

The inaugural FER course is a fully accredited 10-week online course for researchers, trainees and family partners. To date, 300 graduates from 14 different countries have taken the course. Half of those are parents and caregivers. Many have advanced to become leaders across institutions and networks in neurodevelopmental disability, child health, mental health and women’s health research.

We are currently in the process of adapting the course for youth and self-advocates with lived disability experience, frontline practitioners and health care providers. We are also expanding the course to ensure availability to francophone researchers and families. So far, three francophone course instructors have been trained and a French FER course will be launched this year. More recently, we launched an advanced 10-week online training course for FER graduates, called the “FER leadership academy”, with the aim of being a springboard for future FER leadership development in Canada.

The FER program has become a nationally and internationally recognized forum for training and mentorship. The program is creating a rising movement to embed best practices of citizen science into neurodevelopment and child health research institutions and networks across Canada and abroad. While the program has grown through several partnerships, further investments are needed to sustain commercialization nationally and internationally.

Over the years, we have seen the positive contributions that equitable and inclusive training has on the research for kids with neurodevelopmental disabilities and their families. Kids Brain Health is proud to fund programs like FER that allow families and caregivers with real-life experiences to provide researchers with context that they would otherwise not have, therefore producing outcomes that are much easier to implement and more likely to provide value for families.

Canada has an opportunity to be a global thought leader in citizen engagement in conducting health research and implementation for the betterment of our children and future generations. Kids Brain Health has seen success with programs that can be scaled and have the potential to be equally impactful in other areas of science and research. Federal programs, such as the strategic science fund, can play a vital role in unlocking and further enabling these kinds of partnerships.

We stand ready to help this committee, the government and the scientific community in Canada with inclusive and equitable citizen engagement in research.

Thank you very much for your time. I look forward to your questions.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Corey Tochor]

Thank you so much for that.

Now we're on to Dr. Gonzalez for five minutes.

[Andrew Gonzalez, Director, Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Science]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for this invitation to speak to the committee today.

I'm joining you from Montreal, which is situated on the traditional territory of the Kanienkehaka, also known as the Mohawk nation.

I'm a professor and researcher at McGill University and founding director of the Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Science. The QCBS is a strategic research network composed of more than a hundred researchers and 500 graduate students from 15 universities and colleges in Quebec. Over the last decade, QCBS has fostered and supported citizen science projects in Quebec, Canada, and elsewhere around the world.

Last December saw the historic agreement of the Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity framework of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. This landmark plan with four goals and 23 targets is designed to avert the global biodiversity crisis. The text recognizes the essential knowledge contributed by indigenous peoples, local communities and citizen groups the world over. Without them, we know we will not reach these targets.

I am not exaggerating when I say that the last decade has seen a transformation in the participation and contribution of citizens to biodiversity science, where citizens with different levels of expertise can engage in scientific projects.

New technologies have been part of this story. For example, the social network iNaturalist, which allows citizens to take photos of organisms and share them with their phones, has recorded 9.7 million observations of nearly 35,000 species made by 171,000 Canadian citizens. This is a truly remarkable contribution and, indeed, this activity is filling large gaps in our knowledge of Canada's biodiversity.

A report in 2010 by the federal, provincial and territorial governments of Canada called “Canadian biodiversity: ecosystem status and trends 2010” concluded that we lack “long-term, standardized, spatially complete, and readily accessible monitoring information”. This significantly hinders our capacity to assess the status and health of Canada's ecosystems.

This quote is as relevant today as it was in 2010. Our task of monitoring biodiversity change in Canada cannot be achieved by government or researchers alone. Citizen science is vital.

In response to this growth, the QCBS has invested in projects designed to initiate and support citizen science. We do this in collaboration with partners such as government ministries, conservation NGOs and zoos. You can find the projects on the QCBS public portal called Quebio, but allow me to briefly describe a few of them.

Alarming trends in bird, bat and bee populations have been the focus of several successful citizen-led projects. The project Des nids chez vous or Nests at Home encouraged more than 500 elementary school kids to install nest boxes in their backyards and to monitor the presence of nesting birds via the project's website. When a bird box is occupied, scientists then track the health and success of the fledglings to understand the long-term fate of the bird population. To date, these children have made more than 4,500 observations of 111 bird species. The scientific and educational value of a project like this is obviously remarkable.

In the pan-Canadian project Bat Watch, citizens have reported the presence of over 900 bat colonies in their attics, barns or bat boxes, allowing scientists to track the impact of something called white-nose syndrome, a disease that is causing unprecedented mortality in hibernating bats in Canada.

Citizens are also helping to digitize hundreds of thousands of plant specimens in herbarium collections, thanks to an online platform developed by the QCBS. This is providing precious historical reference data now in digital form to the research community.

Canadian citizens are also contributing internationally through applications like iNaturalist, eBird or eButterfly, assisted by artificial intelligence and taxonomic experts, to report observations of wild species in other countries, and this information is being shared globally.

Citizen science also promotes science education. It allows participants to understand the wildlife and the ecosystems that surround them. Citizens are becoming experts in their own right and, in fact, able to further support the scientific activities in their communities. A recent study showed that volunteers who participated in citizen science activities have elevated scores of well-being.

In summary, the participation of citizens in research is having a transformative effect on science and society at large. We recognize the remarkable contribution of citizen science to understanding and averting the biodiversity crisis. We are only just learning to promote this society-wide effort. We hope that this committee will recognize these initiatives.

The QCBS will be very happy to provide additional information and support to the task of this committee. I look forward to your questions.

Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Corey Tochor]

Thank you so much for that.

We're now moving on to the rounds of questioning.

We have MP Mazier.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

I thought I was in the second round.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Corey Tochor]

I'll just clarify.

Gerald, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses today. I want to start off with Ms. Lewis.

That's a unique program that's being offered. I just want to define how citizen scientists are being used there as opposed to just research people who are being examined, I guess. What's the difference between the two?

[Nicola Lewis]

The parent partners are part of the course. When they graduate, we have a match-making service through which they can get involved in research programs that are of interest to them. They're involved in the research right from the get-go, from the very question that's asked and whether that is a question that is relevant and that will provide a solution that will impact our families and children. That is their involvement.

In everything KBHN does in terms of the research we support, we follow what we call a “co-produced pathway”, in which our families, researchers and partners all work together from the get-go. We will not fund research if it doesn't follow that model. It's a very important model. The FER training augments that because we are bringing in new families with the confidence, expertise, knowledge and skills to join more research programs in neurodevelopmental disability.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

My follow-up question is on the FER program. You say that's in 14 different countries. Are you noticing any differences from country to country? Is it relatively all the same? If there are differences, why do you think those differences are happening?

[Nicola Lewis]

Thank you for the question.

In those 14 countries we've had two cohorts that were part of our commercialization efforts. One was in the Netherlands at Utrecht University and the other was in Australia through the University of Melbourne. Those cohorts have happened just in the last year.

Adaptations will be needed. We're working with the investigators at those universities to modify them. The course that was offered at Utrecht University was translated into Dutch. There will be tweaks. Overall, the fundamental principles still apply. In fact, those fundamental principles can apply to other conditions, not just neurodevelopmental. It's the model that's being followed.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

I'm wondering if you have any data to see if there are any differences between children from Canada and those from the Netherlands or something like that. Are you noticing any significant differences in neurological issues or not?

[Nicola Lewis]

I think you're asking me a question there on the prevalence of neurodevelopmental disabilities worldwide.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Yes.

[Nicola Lewis]

There are a lot of similarities right across the world in terms of prevalence. I don't think that Canada is leading the way specifically in prevalence across many neurodevelopmental disabilities. In Canada the figures for prevalence we're seeing are the same as those we are seeing in the U.S. and Europe.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Okay. Thank you for that.

Dr. Kerr, on your research and on using citizen scientists, I know it's very important to have them out there, but what safeguards do you have in place to make sure the information that's being collected is accurate ?

[Dr. Jeremy Kerr]

That's a superb question. The accuracy of citizen science data is paramount, or it risks actually contaminating and hindering the scientific process—which of course would be the exact opposite of what we all intend.

We have a number of different safeguards. One of the things we do in our program, which is replicated in many others, is to ask citizen scientists to submit their observations in the form of a digital photograph. It is a very easy thing to do these days with cellphone technologies. That's one layer.

When that photograph is submitted, we have a panel of experts, people who are the very best folks in the country for identifying butterflies. They can look at that photograph and say, “Okay, this is what you think it is.” Then we can do other things as well. We can say, “Okay, you just said you saw a monarch butterfly, but it's January. I think you might be thinking of something else.” We can do little checks like that. We can evaluate the known flight seasons of different species and say, “Okay, this is when this butterfly is reasonably active and there's a little bit of error on either side of that time. Is it possible you could have seen this butterfly in this place at this time?”

There are a number of different layers. We don't use the unvalidated data for science purposes. We use only the materials that have gone through a number of different independent quality checks.

That's a really good question.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Okay.

Dr. Kerr, that was going to be my follow-up because I know we have had other scientists talk about how they have extreme people, one way or the other, trying to manipulate the research. However, you're saying that if it's not validated, then we don't ever have to worry about inaccurate information from your side.

[Dr. Jeremy Kerr]

If somebody really wanted to cause true mischief and was an expert in an aspect of, in my case, biodiversity, it would be possible to cause mischief, but the fact of the matter is that I have never encountered somebody with such a level of expertise who actually wanted to cause harm.

The other thing is that, if there's an outlier observation that somebody very cleverly slipped into the system, other experts would be excited about this. Then they would go and check and fail to find that this could be supported.

The system has a lot of checks and balances. I wouldn't say we never have to worry about it in the broad realm of citizen science—

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Corey Tochor]

Thank you so much for that. We have to move on to our next member of Parliament.

We have, from the Liberals, MP Sousa.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you very much, all of you, for your presentations. They were very enlightening. They were discouraging but encouraging at the same time, given all the monitoring and engagement by citizen scientists.

Ms. Lewis, you have a cheerleading squad with you. It's great to see what I call “warrior moms” in my riding, people who are fighting to ensure that their kids are developed and have all the opportunities afforded to them. They do extraordinary work. I'm pleased by your presentation today. I'm also encouraged by the network that has been established in what you do.

Can you share with the team here how these projects have enabled these young minds to grow and provide contributions that are unexpected?

[Nicola Lewis]

I would like to answer that by talking about families, parents and trainees, because the program is a matched program. We have an equal number of parents and caregivers and an equal number of junior scientists and trainees, typically, taking the program. They work together in the shared safe space to complete the course and the certification.

Then, when they become involved in the research themselves, the trainees have a new perspective on how to conduct science and on the importance of the contributions that families, individuals and caregivers can give to the research. The families themselves then feel like they are equal and respected members of a team.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

That's a segue to my next question for both Mr. Kerr and Mr. Gonzalez.

I think, Andrew, you mentioned something about the lack of monitoring and information availability, yet, for Mr. Kerr and the team, so many good things are happening and much is being reported.

Can you elaborate on what is lacking, then, in your mind, Mr. Gonzalez?