Embassy Magazine reports that all of Statistics Canada’s standard online products, including the census, socioeconomic and geographic data, will be offered to the public for free starting February 2012. While Statistics Canada has been working towards opening up more of its data for several years, it still currently charges for some online data, including some data sets inside its its “key socioeconomic databas”, the Canadian Socioeconomic Information Management System. Researchers, economists and other individuals buy these products, and several firms are also licensed by the agency to act as redistributors. Some of those firms charge for reselling the data, and some roll it into other value-added products they sell. Organizations currently buying the data from Statistics Canada will be “encouraged” to redistribute information under the government’s new open data licence agreement.
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