Re: RE: CivicAccess-discuss Digest, Vol 14, Issue 5

Posted by Hugh McGuire-2 on Sep 12, 2008; 2:17pm
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/RE-CivicAccess-discuss-Digest-Vol-14-Issue-5-tp1206p1207.html

> You can buy the Postal Code to Federal Electoral District file for a  
> first
> year fee of $2500, with the annual fee for quarterly updates  
> thereafter
> costing $500.
> ...
> Alternate solutions are to scrape the data from a site which does  
> not have a
> fair use policy excluding that.
once upon a time this was going to be the first advocacy project of  
civicaccess.ca ... lobby the government to free electoral/postal code  
data. having it cost so damn much (or anything at all) causes problems  
to the most basic of online civic engagement projects. why should we  
have to pay $2500 to get a dataset that tells you what electoral  
district you are in by postal code? it seems like an elemental kind of  
information about our country, that any citizen should have access to  
for free, and yet...

This is a perfect case of why the current system is undemocratic,  
stupid, and blocks effective engagement in our democratic process.