Canadian Participation in the LSST

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will revolutionize optical wide-field astronomy while opening the window to short time-domain astronomy. Many astronomy communities, like Canada's, largely do not have membership in the LSST.  As a consequence, they have no proprietary data access but could benefit from LSST data products. We have conducted a survey of the Canadian community to gauge their interests with LSST, and what data products are most desirable to them.  We find that the astronomy research of Canadians would greatly benefit from access to LSST data products. Canadian astronomers fall broadly into two categories: those interested in the time domain and LSST's alerts and those interested in more classical wide-field astronomy of the stationary sky. We have identified four data products in particular that the majority of responders desire. These data products represent a relatively low data volume compared to the full LSST pixel-to-catalog products. We present the idea of a Canadian LSST-light Science Platform that will host the four most desirable products upon their public release, serving access to all Canadians. This platform would act as a national facility that would largely satisfy the LSST-related data needs of the majority of Canadian astronomers at a fraction of the overall cost of full national membership. Hosting the public release imagery for worldwide access has been recognized as a highly valuable in-kind contribution to LSST operations, and could facilitate access to proprietary data for Canadian astronomers.  Recommendation: we recommend that Canada establish an LSST Science Platform to enable Canadian astronomers to make full use of the LSST data set.