Re: Stats Can update

Posted by Tracey P. Lauriault-2 on May 02, 2006; 1:31am
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/Stats-Can-update-tp509p514.html

Nice! Michael! See response in-line.

Hugh McGuire wrote:

yes! civicaccess.ca's first victory! ;-)

Michael Boyle wrote:
  

Hi everyone,

I'm not 100% sure of the modalities of the list and whether simply  
passing on information is within scope, but via a friend's blog today  
I read that Stats Can has made all of its electronic publications  
free as of last week. Here is the relevant announcement: "http:// 
www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/060424/b060424a.htm" which indicates  
that they have made about 150 items free for which there was  
previously a charge.
    

Tis true!

To browse the publications, from that page click on the "Our products  
and services" link at the top and then follow the link called "Browse  
our free internet publications (PDF or HTML)".

Progress? I haven't followed Stats Can closely enough to qualify how  
important this is, but I suppose that making anything free for which  
there once was a charge is somewhat positive.
    

It is a small step in the right direction.  I navigated through about 20 docs quickly, many are excellent research papers, reports or methodological documentation.  The data remain as the scale of the nation or province.  Some of the health reports are great.  The Geography files are in PDF and some of the geomatics files are available.  The free reports provide useful but limited descriptive statistics between and among provinces only.

What we really want are the data and their associated documentation and metadata in tabular formats and the boundary files.  We would also like those files to be at the scale of the neighbourhood, city boundaries, wards, counties, District administration areas and so on.  This is where some excellent citizen analysis can take place.  My guess is we will start to see 2001 census data more readily very soon, and perhaps even 1996 corrected to the amalgamated city boundaries, but the 2006 data will be very costly. 

Our job is to help them along with their releases, perhaps we could draft a letter to thank them and then ask for what we want? 

Cheers
T

Best,

Michael

_____________________________________________________________________
Michael Boyle                                           www.mikel.org



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