We already know how to do this because it has already been done once before.​

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In 2009, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a research organization of the United States Department of Defense, organized a competition for exploring the roles the Internet and social networking play in solving problems that have a broad geographic scope. The challenge was designed to generate ideas for collaborative efforts between people working in different locations, at different times, and with different skills. It succeeded in establishing the value of what is now generally referred to as "crowd-sourcing".

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In the competition, teams had to locate red balloons placed around the United States and then report their findings to DARPA. Due to the distributed nature of the contest, many teams used online resources, such as social media sites, to gather information or to recruit people who would look for balloons. The contest was won by a team from MIT that was able to identify the location of all ten balloons in under nine hours, much quicker than DARPA expected.

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The Great Canadian Treasure Hunt has been designed to run for a year, with the smaller prizes being spooled out monthly and the Grand Prize probably waiting until the end. So this will not be a quick task. But the idea of crowd-sourcing is still worth a try ... the worst that will happen is we'll have a lot of fun feeling like pirates. The best that will happen is that we'll win some treasure, which will be shared with all the co-pirates who climb aboard for this adventure.