Open Access In Canada

[Tracey P. Lauriault]

Hey Gang;

I just posted the following comment on David Eaves' Blog re-http://eaves.ca/2009/10/08/open-data-us-vs-canada/ which is a really interesting post well worth the read.  I would love to find a way to have the open data folks work with scientists, geomaticists, bureacrats, and librarians.  There seems to live different information ecologies with not much overlap but all discussing the same issue!

David;

There are lots of open data available at the Federal Level you just have to know what you are looking for.  Natural Resources Canada, GeoConnections programs also known as the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure, the equivalent to the FGDC in the US has a very amazing open data policy that we need to be bragging about.  Please look at Geobase (http://www.geobase.ca/) for framework data (e.g. canadian road network data, Electoral boundaries, political boundaries, etc.), Geogratis (http://geogratis.cgdi.gc.ca/) for a number of other datasets (e.g. Topographic Maps, Canada Land Inventory, etc.) and the Discovery portal (http://geodiscover.cgdi.ca/gdp/) with is very similar to Gov.org.  For the first two refer to the Unrestricted User Licenses (http://geogratis.cgdi.gc.ca/geogratis/en/licence.jsp;jsessionid=F15D6495B46D656AD5862DE2B3424474) which are the best crown copyright work around I have yet to see anywhere in Canada.  The Discovery Portal is a location where many government, non government and private sector organizations register their datasets.  Portals are not the end all and be all, but they are analogous to a large well catalogued library of data.  In geomatics and many of the sciences portals are used.  In the portal you will find data from Environment Canada etc.  GeoConnections also develops is infrastructure using open architectures, open specifications and standards and adhere to the open geospatial consortium interoperability standards and has been using open source geomatics for over a decade (http://www.geoconnexions.org/publications/Technical_Manual/2007/CGDI_devguide_2007.pdf).  The Atlas of Canada (http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/index.html) was the first national Atlas to use open source web mapping technologies.  GeoConnections also developed a second version of their data dissemination guidelines (http://www.geoconnections.org/publications/Best_practices_guide/Guide_to_Best_Practices_Summer_2008_Final_EN.pdf) which I urge you to read and promote since there is much sound knowledge in that report that can be translated to any government data initiative at any scale in Canada.

Elections Canada also has quite a bit of free data )http://www.elections.ca/intro.asp?section=pas&document=index&lang=e) but not the Canada Post Postal Code Look up file.  Digital Copyright Canada has written extensively about that one (http://www.digital-copyright.ca/edid/postal).  The Elections Canada Federal Electoral District File is over at Geobase.

Where things get terrible is Statistics Canada where our census and survey data are resold to us at exorbitant prices.  Cost recovery is practised with a vengeance, where it, a government institution behaves like a data monopoly.  We can thank the Tories in 1986 for cancelling the Census until the private sector protested.  The Tories then said if you want the data so badly you can pay for it, then slashed StatCan's budget by 100 000 000 turning the institution to a marketing and sales machine in order to recoup those costs.  This is where democracy is most tested, since only the state and wealthy organizations have access to these data, then it is only their point of view we get to hear.  Further, StatCan sells those same data to all levels of government and its own federal departments, so who knows how many times tax payers pay for those data.  The costs are way to high for citizens and not for profit groups making their ability to generate evidence based information making nearly impossible (i.e. poverty, homelessness, population health).  In terms of the private sector, this restrictive cost and regressive licensing regime stifles business innovation, particularly for small to medium sized businesses.  Also, it is hard to develop a business plan and understand a niche if you do not have access to the data to do so.

Environment Canada's record is spotty, they have quite a bit of data, and quite a bit is shared, however, they were recently taken to court for not releasing mining pollutant data (http://datalibre.ca/2009/04/27/canadian-federal-court-orders-the-release-of-mine-pollutant-data/).  We forget how powerful the voice of industry is here in Canada.  Also, the weather data is from Environment Canada and they seem to like to sell it to news agencies.

Citizenship and Immigration, Health Canada, HRSDC, Heritage and Industry Canada are not coordinated at all regarding access to public data.  I recently tried to get city scale personal and business bankruptcy data, and I was told that if I had all the postal codes for each city then I could possible get those data.  I was dumbfounded that during a recession, these data are not even used at the City scale by the Feds., particularly since Cities are a big driver of the Economy.  It is the same when you are trying to get any data about Canada Student Loans and student debt data.  The Canadian Institute of Health Information (CIHI) is a huge cost recovery shop, and of course so is StatCan when it comes to Health data, to the point that if you actually wanted to move forward on a population health project for the nation, well, you cannot afford it.  That is a big stumbling block for our nation and for health prevention.  Vital statistics for instance are provincial and territorial data, and these are also cost recovery shops.

Canada and the US are the same when it comes to provincial and territorial (PT) data and city data.  There are no uniform access and discovery policies, these are ad hoc at best if they exist at all.  They are terribly internally disorganised and in the case of PTs they seem further away from citizens while being the closest in terms of program delivery.  Manitoba has made its geomatics information free (https://mli2.gov.mb.ca/weblinks/3.html).  But that does not mean all their data are free.

I would say that we are very similar to the US in many respects, but alas, differ in that we have a Westminster system that has citizens as subjects to the crown as does the UK of course, New Zealand and Australia who all have crown copyright issues.  We do not have a "we the people" type of system.  We do have an awful lot of free data, and some great organizations like the Data Liberation Initiative (http://www.statcan.gc.ca/dli-ild/dli-idd-eng.htm) who at least got Canadian universities access to Census data, we have awesome data librarians in most universities, we have a great geospatial data infrastructure pushing the boundaries, but we also have a disconnect from the open data people and geomaticist and scientists, since they do not know what each other is up to.  It would be great to bridge that gap.

CivicAccess.ca and datalibre.ca discuss these issues and you may want to register to the list, look at the archives as many of the issues have been discussed there or rss the datalibre.ca blog for updates on many things data.  There are many other great data access initiatives, but alas, I do need to get on with the day.

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Tracey P. Lauriault
613-234-2805
https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault