Because, frankly, there isn't a decent list elsewhere in this country that's easilly accessable and searchable.
This isn’t the first attempt at throwing all the data together in one location for all of Canada. First, the Government of Canada has thrown their hat into the ring sometime ago with the Open Government Programs in Canada Map as part of their Federal Government Webpage overhaul. But it's already old: The calendar hasn't been updated since Summer 2017, and the map of links is a case example in poor user interface. Bleh!
There are two other notable aggregators. One worth mention is Data Libre - By Civic Access. It’s a blog that offers not only the data, but resources that encourage of dissemination, resources on how to use various bits of data, and examples of this data being used. The second aggregator is another global open data map that is decently-designed, but isn’t always curated. Open Data Inception(Global).
Topographic Information This is an openlayers-based geospatial data extraction tool. It's okay, and it's much better than what was once there.
The open data portal also contains a lot of solid datasets, but the following is a list of specific files that might be of interest:
At this point, we should all know that Canada is but a federation of provinces that play their own game according to their own situation. As a result, there are provinces which are very open about their data (BC and Ontario), there are provinces that are using it to support both community and industry (Alberta), and there are provinces that are starting, holding off, or walking away from the open data game.
The following is my latest guess of the entire collection. If you don't like it, want to update me or prove me wrong, shoot me a tweet, or carve out a Github issue!
British Columbia - data
BC has a older system that processes its data. While some of the UI may be difficult to understand at the start, they have a decent customer service team and dedicated individuals who are part of the community. In addition to the provincial government, many communities boast an open data portal as well as the only Aborginal nation in Canada! The following is a list:
Unlike other large cities, Victoria and Vancouver aren't amalgamated. This means that the data which is covered in the city's open data portal doesn't cover the entire metropolitan area.
- Nanaimo
- Cowichan Valley
- North Cowichan
- Capital Regional District
- Victoria
- Saanich
- Metro Vancouver
- City of Vancouver
- Richmond
- North Vancouver
- Qualicum Beach
- (Vancouver) Islands Trust
- Surrey
- New Westminister
- Langley
- Chilliwack
- Regional District of Central Okanagan
- Regional District of Okanagan
- [Regional District of North Okanagan] (http://www.rdno.ca/index.php/maps/digital-data)
- Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen
- District of Peachland
- Westbank First Nation
- [Kamloops] (http://www.kamloops.ca/downloads/maps/launch.htm)
- [Kelowna] (http://www.kelowna.ca/CM/Page3936.aspx)
- [Vernom] (https://www.vernon.ca/government-services/maps-gis/open-data-catalogue)
- [Prince George] (http://data.cityofpg.opendata.arcgis.com/)
- [Nelson] (http://data.nelsoncity.opendata.arcgis.com/)
Alberta (Open Data Areas - AltaLIS - Open Alberta)
Alberta, like BC, supports the distribution of open data for social issues as well as mapping. But in addition to that, Alberta can proudly boast of provisionning high-end datasets that include some of the most precise digital elevation you could obtain for free in Canada! Unlike the rest of Canada, Alberta appears unique in using private industry to deal with open data through a partnership culminated in AltaLIS. And it's clear these datasets serve a purpose as stimulus to the O+G industry.
In the past, the Calgary Regional Partnership was a partnership that provisionned the open data across all of the regions within Calgary. Due to budget cuts, this partnership is no more, and the data is no longer publicly-available.
Another update for late 2018 is Strathcona County: They added their building footprints to their vast offerings.
- Red Deer
- Grande Prairie
- Grande Prairie County: 1 2
- Edmonton
- Edmonton - Capital Region
- Calgary
- Lethbridge
- Strathcona County
Saskatchewan contains open data resources provided by myriad provincial authorities, but it isn't aggregated except at sites such as Open Data Saskatchewan, a sleepy advocacy.
Manitoba Data
There appears to be an open data site, but it hasn't been updated since 2014. Not only has it been recently neglected, but it's very old and broken. To get to the data, you must register. The registration process doesn't verify your email address. Once you're in, the browser warns you of a lack of a security certificate, and it's clear the CSS is gone. I've been told that the government is rebuilding their website, so there might be a big change in the data landscape for 2017.
Ontario Data
Ontario has a well-developed open data catalogue and a strong community that promotes the use and critique of open data. The province holds most of its open geodata on their catalogue.
- Regional Ecological Data Collection Project
- My TTC (Tools for software devs who want to enhance the TTC experienct)
- Brampton
- Burlington
- Chatham-Kent
- Grey County
- Guelph
- Haldimand County
- Hamilton
- Huron County
- London
- Kitchener
- Kingston
- Milton
- Mississaugua
- Newmarket
- Niagara Falls
- Niagara Region
- North Frontenac
- Oakville
- Ottawa
- Peel Region
- Region of Waterloo
- Sudbury
- St Catherines
- Thunder Bay
- Toronto
- Waterloo
- Welland
- Windsor
- York Region
Québec - Données
While not as strong as Ontario, Alberta or Britsh Columbia's open data sites, Québec has a strong offering, a growing culture and many towns which are growing their own data programs.
New Brunswick - Date: 1, 2 (needs flash...), 3 (AGOL LiDAR Catalogue)
This past April, the Premier of New Brunswick News Release. You can see their young data catalogue is at its starting stages. Since then, they've taken the grand leap of providing a large LiDAR dataset, earning the distinction of being the first province to do so!
Nova Scotia's Treasury Board Manual indicates that the government is pushing the public sector towards an "open by default" setting in publishing data.
Prince Edward Island - Data
Prince Edward Island provides open data since as early as 2001, when it had a civic addressing system which offers geographic data on the location of all its addresses. At the same time NB embraced open data, PEI quietly went to an open-by-default and has also removed any licensing requirement before each download.
Newfoundland and Labrador - Data
Newfoundland and Labrador also are new to the open data world. They've only been active for two years press release and spout a decent site, despite all the troubles that are ongoing in the eastern province.
Currently, Yukon uses a Geocortex/Esri web portal for serving and diplaying open data. With this infrastructure, it has been busy adding data and imagery across all seasons so far in 2018:
- NWT Centre for Geomatics
- Note: Access is restricted behind a login on an unsecure HTTP website
As of right now, there appears to be no collection of data for Nunavut in the open held by a provincial agency or below. However, Nunavit Geoscience holds a portal for geoscience information and data
There are some stellar sources of data which exists outside of Canada with a global reach. I enjoy using this data and so can you!
- First, there's NASA's Earth Explorer USGS Earth Explorer. Unlike the Canadian open data offerings, there are series of individual scenes from the entire Landsat catalogue, digital elevation by map selection as opposed to NTS Tile, and some older orthophotography if you live close to the US Border. It requires an account, but is entirely worth it.
- Geofabrik. This is a site that allows you to download data from OpenStreetMap, the map which you can (and should!) edit.
- Remote Pixel by Vincent Sarago Twitter
- Transit Land. This is a community-based group that seeks to offer data for all metropolitan transit services in easilly-consumed formats.
- Transitfeeds. This is another community-driven site that seeks to offer transit data across the world, but in GTFS format.
- Public Sector Digest Rankings of Open Municipalities
This is just a snapshot of the data I was able to capture that exists at the end of 2016. I've since added updates here or there. There's a good chance a lot of this data will no longer be at the link by the time you attempt to access it. Websites evolve, scopes evolve and so do agencies. If you feel like you want to carry the torch, you're very welome to pick up where I've stopped. This article was drafted on a Github Repo and breaking this article apart is simple as forking the repository and making this into your own thing. I'd be happy for anyone to carry the torch, or just copy all my links into their own website or map.
Making lists is a long process. There's a few people who took their time and offered a few links and hints. They are (in no particular order):
To the extent possible under law,
Brian Bancroft
has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to
An aggregation of open data links across canada.
This work is published from:
Canada.