National Statistics / 2013 40% open

What data is expected?

Key national statistics such as demographic and economic indicators (GDP, unemployment, population, etc). To satisfy this category, the following minimum criteria must be met:

• GDP for the whole country updated at least quarterly
• Unemployment statistics updated at least monthly
• Population updated at least once a year

What data is available

•   Openly licensed? Unsure (No URL given)
•   Is the data available for free? Unsure
•   Is the data machine readable? Yes (multiple)
•   Available in bulk? Yes
•   Is the data provided on a timely and up to date basis? Unsure
•   Publicly available? Yes
•   Is data in digital form? Yes
•   Is the data available online? Unsure (No URL given)
•   Does the data exist? Yes

Details

The National Statistical Agency is Statistics Canada - http://www.statcan.gc.ca/start-debut-eng.html. Some of the data it produces are free and under and open licence, many are not and are under a cost recovery program. Statistical data are also available from many federal agencies and they are released intermittently. Administrative health data are available from the Canadian Institute of Health Information (CIHI). Health, education and so on are administered by provinces and territories and these are available by contacting all 13 jurisdictions. Revenue data are available from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) while housing data are available from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). Unemployment, bankruptcy data are available from Human Resources and Development Services canada (HRSDC), immigration from Citizen Immigration Canada, and so on. Some data are for fee, some are for free, some are difficult to find as there is no central repository, many of the agencies are not well organized and not all are in the open data portal. Also some of these are administrative data while others are official national statistics. There is a unified open data licence in progress but this is not yet in practice for all federal level data and this is most certainly not the case for provinces and territories. Municipal statistical data are available at that jurisdiction. An up to date list of open data portals is available here - http://datalibre.ca/links-resources/.