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Re: elections canada

Posted by Hugh McGuire on Feb 06, 2007; 11:12pm
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/elections-canada-tp814p862.html

from the start it seemed to me that civicaccess.ca needed some very  
specific, small projects to work on. This one (postal codes and  
electoral districts) seems very interesting for many reasons:

1. simple: everyone understands what this data is, and why it might  
be useful to citizens
2. crazy: everyone in the world will think it crazy that this data is  
not freely available to citizens
3. press: it is so simple and crazy that I bet there could be a good  
tizzy of press created about this - certainly on the web: no doubt  
boing boing will be interested, but others as well, hopefully some  
papers in canada
4. given 1,2,3 it is an ideal test-case for why civic access to data  
is important, and why canada needs to update its stupid policies

I have sent out a number of emails to various Canadian agencies in  
the last few days, with some answers I'll share with you guys soon. I  
got a call back from Elections Canada, and I will ask about  
liberating financial data - and I will ask too about the postal code  
data. I'll keep y'all posted.

Longer-term, one thing civicaccess.ca could do is try to start these  
little discrete data liberation projects, and then get them all  
linked together through one aggregating site (ie. a revamped  
civicaccess.ca).

cheers,
Hugh.

On Feb 6, 2007, at 4:22 PM, Daniel Haran wrote:

> On 2/6/07, Russell McOrmond <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> Note: I believe we would have to purchase data from Canada Post to do
>> this, but given we wouldn't be redistributing this data it would be a
>> fixed fee and not something that would impact on us freely  
>> distributing
>> the results of our work.
>
> When I asked Canada Post about it, they said they wouldn't allow the
> creation of such a derivative data-set.
>
> If that's not a good legal interpretation (any lawyers here?), we
> would be able to buy Canada Post's data, and if there's someone with
> GIS knowledge that can process that data against the parliamentary
> district boundaries, we could put the postal code to electoral
> district database in the public domain.
>
> Sadly, postal codes change quite often- but that solution would still
> be cheaper than buying a single license for makepovertyhistory.
>
> d.
>
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