1. The Canadian open-data landscape
Canada has one of the most mature open-data ecosystems in the world. Every province publishes structured data through web APIs. Most municipalities over 50,000 population publish at least basic data. The federal government operates open.canada.ca with 70,000+ datasets. The catch: there's no single national catalogue, formats vary, and licences differ across publishers.
This guide maps the practical landscape for B2B sales teams sourcing commercial leads.
2. Federal sources
2.1. open.canada.ca
The federal master catalogue, built on CKAN. 70,000+ datasets across all federal departments. Licence: Open Government Licence – Canada (OGL-Canada), which permits commercial use with attribution.
- API:
open.canada.ca/data/en/api/3/action/package_show?id=<slug> - Bulk download: every dataset has direct CSV/JSON links
- Refresh: varies by dataset (some daily, some annual)
2.2. CanadaBuys
Federal tender portal. All solicitations, awards, and supplier records public.
2.3. Statistics Canada (StatCan)
National statistical agency. Time-series tables for labour, business demography, manufacturing, trade, housing. Mostly via Table IDs at www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/tbl/csv/<TABLE_ID>-eng.zip.
2.4. CRA T3010
Canada Revenue Agency publishes every registered charity's annual return. Useful for sales into non-profits, religious institutions, and foundations.
3. Provincial sources
3.1. Alberta (open.alberta.ca + AHS + AGLC + AER)
Alberta has multiple publishers. Public health inspections via AHS, liquor/cannabis licensees via AGLC, well-licence operators via AER. All under Alberta Open Government Licence.
3.2. British Columbia (catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca)
BC Data Catalogue — well-organized, well-documented. Licence: Open Government Licence – BC. Strong on natural-resource and health data.
3.3. Ontario (data.ontario.ca + MERX + ACT)
Ontario Open Data, Ontario Public Tenders (via MERX), Alcohol & Gaming Commission of Ontario (ACT) licensee data. Open Government Licence – Ontario.
3.4. Québec (donneesquebec.ca)
Données Québec — catalogue covering provincial + many municipal datasets. Licence varies by dataset (mostly CC-BY 4.0 or OGL-QC). Most data is bilingual (French canonical).
3.5. Atlantic (data.novascotia.ca, GeoNB, Open Data PEI, Open Data NL)
Smaller catalogues per province. Many small towns publish via the provincial portal rather than running their own. NS uses Socrata (data.novascotia.ca). NB uses GeoNB (geonb.snb.ca). PE uses ArcGIS Hub. NL has a basic portal.
3.6. Prairies (Manitoba Geoportal, Saskatchewan Open Data)
Both provinces have catalogues but coverage is thinner than central/eastern Canada. Municipal coverage is sparse outside Winnipeg/Saskatoon/Regina.
4. Municipal sources by tier
4.1. Tier 1 (Socrata-based)
Toronto, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Chicago — all publish via Socrata's SODA API. Same query syntax everywhere. Use ?$limit=N&$where=<clause>.
4.2. Tier 1 (ArcGIS Hub)
Most other Canadian cities publish via ArcGIS Hub (data.gov.bc.ca, geohub.brampton.ca, data-hrm.opendata.arcgis.com, hundreds more). Same REST API pattern: https://services<n>.arcgis.com/<orgID>/arcgis/rest/services/<service>/FeatureServer/<layer>/query?where=1%3D1&outFields=*&f=json
The pagination is via resultOffset and resultRecordCount (default cap is usually 1,000-2,000 records per request).
4.3. Tier 1 (CKAN-based)
Toronto, Montréal, Ottawa, Halifax — also publish to CKAN-flavoured catalogues. CKAN uses package_show?id=<slug> to get metadata + download URLs.
4.4. Tier 2 (custom REST APIs)
Some cities run custom APIs (Vancouver's ODS v2.1, Calgary's Socrata derivative). Mostly well-documented but each has its quirks.
4.5. Tier 3 (PDF-only or no open data)
Smaller towns and most rural municipalities. Workaround: many publish to the provincial portal under their municipality name.
5. Licence overview
| Licence | Commercial use? | Attribution required? |
|---|---|---|
| OGL-Canada / OGL-provincial | Yes | Yes |
| CC-BY 4.0 | Yes | Yes |
| ODbL | Yes | Yes (share-alike) |
| City-specific OGL (Halifax, Edmonton, Toronto, Vancouver) | Yes | Yes |
| "Non-commercial only" (rare) | No | n/a |
| "All rights reserved" (rare for open data) | No | n/a |
Always check the licence URL in the dataset's metadata before using for commercial purposes.
6. Common pitfalls
- Pagination limits. Most APIs cap a single response at 1,000-2,000 records. Use pagination.
- Schema drift. Municipal schemas change. Build column-name maps that tolerate aliases.
- Geometry bloat. ArcGIS returns geometry by default; strip it unless you need it.
- Throttling. Hammer an open-data API and you'll get rate-limited. Sleep between requests if you're doing bulk historical pulls.
- Schema changes mid-year. Some datasets re-schema each fiscal year. Subscribe to notifications where the publisher offers them.
7. The Shovel Radar abstraction
What Shovel Radar does is hide all of this under one weekly Excel workbook. Behind the scenes we run pagination, schema mapping, dedup, trade-routing, and CASL-compliant phone enrichment across 382 cities + provincial + federal sources. The output is the same format whether the source was a Toronto CKAN bucket, a Halifax ArcGIS Hub, or a Montréal Données Québec table.
8. Further reading
- All 110 covered cities — full per-city source breakdown in each city's READ ME tab
- Federal Procurement Guide
- How to Read a Canadian Building Permit
Use the playbook
Shovel Radar gives you the trade-routed permit feed this guide describes.
Weekly Excel. 382 Canadian cities. Same playbook, scaled.
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