Speaking points
Dr. Mona Nemer
Chief Science Advisor of Canada
SRSR Committee Meeting: Citizen Science
Ottawa, Ontario
February 2, 2023
Check against delivery
Good morning, [chair], vice chairs and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to exchange with you on this important and timely topic. Today, we as a society find ourselves renegotiating many of our systems and institutions affected by the trials of the past three years. Going forward, we need to consider citizen science as part of our strategies for empowering individuals and communities, for building trust in our institutions, and for sustaining our democracy.
Citizen science, which is sometimes referred to as “participatory research,” is a collaborative approach to research between public volunteers and professionals. It operates in a variety of disciplines, with the common value being that it opens up the scientific enterprise to people beyond the professional communities.
In the past ten years, citizen science has helped to make advancements in several fields including space, the environment, agriculture and health. It has given us the discovery of five new exoplanets.Footnote 1 It has achieved the first crowdsourced redesign of a proteinFootnote 2 widely used in synthetic chemistry. It has helped to design ways to prevent the covid virus from entering cells.Footnote 3 And it has led to the discovery of entirely new aspects of the earth’s aurora and magnetic field.Footnote 4
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.
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. Both the European UnionFootnote 5 and the U.S.Footnote 6 and currently fund major projects — in fact, the U.S. has had since 2017 the Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Act,Footnote 7 which aims to promote innovation through open and voluntary collaboration. Australia has implemented a citizen science association.Footnote 8 Germany has created a federally funded and centralized platformFootnote 9 to promote it. The Netherlands implemented a process to facilitate the input of citizens and scientists in the Dutch Research Agenda,Footnote 10 and Belgium has done somethingFootnote 11 similar.
These are all very promising initiatives that are helping to connect people around the world to their communities, the environment, and the science and innovation enterprise. Here at home, we have some citizen science initiatives, both within and outside of government, and they are doing great things.
The federal citizen science portal currently lists 55 projects across the country, from Abeilles citoyennes,Footnote 12 which collects data on pollinator species in Quebec’s agricultural regions, to the Colony BFootnote 13 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,Footnote 14 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, which 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 5th 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.
As a country, Canada would be well served to introduce citizen science early in our education system. 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’ recommendationFootnote 15 that countries rethink their scientific education and equip students to be able to undertake either participatory or professional research later on. Going forward, as the committee conducts its study, I would encourage the members to keep in mind that in the coming years, Canada is going to need more scientists and engineers to deal with the demands of a changing world — from harnessing emerging technologies to mitigating and adapting to climate change to preparing for and responding to health crises and other emergencies.
Implementing citizen science early on could help to address some of these urgent needs. By providing an engaging, integrated learning continuum built on diversity and inclusiveness, we would be supporting those who are most vulnerable to exclusion, alienation and dropping out. At the same time, we would be helping to build trust in our democratic systems and institutions. I am confident that with the active participation of Canada’s science community, we can create a participatory science enterprise that helps to build a more resilient, informed and prosperous society.