Full provenance

Where every row comes from.

Every dataset Shovel Radar delivers is derived from government-published open data — building permit APIs, business licence registries, federal property directories, provincial health registries, and Statistics Canada tables. Nothing purchased from data brokers. Nothing scraped from private sites.

Open-data licences (OGL-Canada 2.0, City of Calgary Open Government Licence, Statistics Canada licence) allow commercial derived-data products. We publish this page so you can verify the primary source before relying on any dataset for sales decisions.

How the pipeline works

1
Ingest. Python scripts hit each portal's JSON API (Socrata, ArcGIS REST, CKAN, OpenDataSoft) on a scheduled cadence — nightly for high-velocity sources like building permits, weekly for slower sources like provincial registries.
2
Filter + score. Raw permit records are filtered to remove residential junk, internal city filings, and permit classes irrelevant to trades (27-keyword junk filter). Commercial records are scored by project value, permit class, and work class.
3
Enrich. Addresses are enriched via Google Places API (phone, website, category) and Gemini AI (pitch text, service-phase classification). Phone numbers go through a waterfall: Places → social scrape → AI inference → "N/A". No purchased contact databases.
4
Deliver. Outputs are formatted as Excel workbooks (navy-blue-header PremiumExcelBuilder format) and emailed Monday at 6 AM. Row counts shown on product pages reflect the live dataset at the time of the last weekly run.

Calgary (anchor market)

All City of Calgary datasets are published under the Calgary Open Government Licence and served via the Socrata REST API at data.calgary.ca.

Dataset	Socrata ID	Products using it	Cadence
Building Permits	`c2es-76ed`	Active Fitout, Inspection Failures, Roofing Slice, MEP Heatmap, Whale Lists, and 50+ others	Daily
Business Licences	`vdjc-pybd`	Zero-Review Hitlist, Restaurant Capex List, Digital Agency Hitlist, Cannabis/Liquor Slice	Weekly
Development Permits	`6933-unw5`	DP Pipeline (10 vertical splits), Pre-Tender lookahead 3–6 months ahead of building permits	Daily
Sub-Permits (electrical / plumbing / gas)	`4bsw-nn7w`	MEP Volume Heatmap, phase signals overlaid on Active Fitout	Weekly
Property Assessments	`wrtt-2nqs`	Property Tax Appeal Watch, Aged Permit HVAC Slice (building year join)	Annual refresh
Land Use (Zoning)	`qe6k-p9nh`	Zoning overlay on all permit products — flags C-N2, I-G, CC-MH zones	Quarterly
BIA Boundaries	`g4gb-t7bt`	BIA district tag on commercial permit records (Downtown, Inglewood, Marda Loop, etc.)	Quarterly
Land Use Redesignations	`33vi-ew4s`	Lifecycle Lock-In product — parcels changing zoning class (rezoning = 12–18 month pre-permit signal)	Weekly
Plus-15 Skyway Network	`3u3x-hrc7`	Plus-15 coverage overlay on downtown commercial permits	Annual
311 Service Requests	Open Calgary portal	Chronic Complaint Hitlist — properties with 3+ bylaw complaints in 24 months	Weekly

Provincial & federal registries

Source	Publisher	Products using it
AHS Continuing Care Registry	Alberta Health Services	AHS_Continuing_Care_Live — 250 LTC + supportive-living facilities, current operator data
CPSA Physician Registry	College of Physicians & Surgeons of Alberta	Alberta_Health_Professional_Radar (physician slice)
CDSA Dentist Registry	College of Dental Surgeons of Alberta	Alberta_Health_Professional_Radar (dentist slice), Medical_Dental_Buildout_Hitlist cross-match
T3010 Charity Returns	CRA (Canada Revenue Agency)	T3010_Charity_Capex_Hitlist — 736 charitable orgs ranked by capex spend, Calgary_Foundation_Grants_Watch
Federal Real Property Directory	Treasury Board Secretariat / open.canada.ca	Federal_Real_Property_Radar — 88 federal buildings in Calgary CMA
Federal Contract Awards	PSPC / buyandsell.gc.ca	Federal_Contract_Awards_Watch — awarded construction + service contracts for Alberta primes
Statistics Canada — Construction Survey	Statistics Canada (www150.statcan.gc.ca)	Carbon_Clock benchmark tables, Macro Intel add-on market-size data
Stat Can CMA Population Tables	Statistics Canada	Per-city pricing formula, coverage matrix, city-level TAM sizing

Other Canadian cities (382 total)

Each city uses its own open-data portal. The table below lists the primary portal type per city cluster. All feeds are anonymous, rate-limited, and fully public.

Socrata portals

Calgary — data.calgary.ca
Edmonton — data.edmonton.ca
Winnipeg — data.winnipeg.ca

CKAN portals

Toronto — ckan0.cf.opendata.inter.prod-toronto.ca
Vancouver — opendata.vancouver.ca
Ottawa + federal datasets — open.canada.ca / ouvert.canada.ca

ArcGIS REST portals

Red Deer — arcgis.reddeer.ca
Saskatoon — gisext.saskatoon.ca/arcgis
Regina — opengis.regina.ca
Milton, Belleville, PEI municipalities — municipal ArcGIS Online instances
100+ smaller cities — ArcGIS Online hosted feature services at services.arcgis.com

OpenDataSoft portals

Québec municipalities — Données Québec MAMH permit data, RACJ amusement licences
Atlantic municipalities — NS, NB, PEI open-data instances

Enrichment sources (phone / category / pitch)

The address and permit data is public-domain. Enrichment adds contact context using APIs governed by separate terms:

Source	What it adds	Terms
Google Places API	Phone, website, business category, hours, rating — matched to permit address	Google Maps Platform ToS; data displayed per-session only, not persisted in bulk
Gemini AI (Google)	Pitch text, service-phase classification ("DESIGN" / "TENDER" / "ACTIVE"), construction-phase timing	Google AI Studio API ToS; outputs are AI-generated text, not retrieved personal data
Apollo.io (optional)	Decision-maker name + title for commercial GC / developer applicants (up to 3 contacts)	Apollo Data ToS; only enabled for subscribers on Professional plan

What we explicitly don't use

✕ Private data brokers. We don't buy contact lists from Dun & Bradstreet, ZoomInfo, Clearbit, or similar. Every lead address comes from a government source.
✕ LinkedIn scraping. No automated LinkedIn crawling. Contact data comes from Google Places (public) and Apollo (verified business directory), never from harvesting social profiles at scale.
✕ Private property registry access. Land Titles data referenced in products (portfolio operators, multi-permit analysis) comes from the public permit applicant field, not from a private Land Titles pull that requires authorization.
✕ Residential homeowner names (PIPEDA). Luxury Residential products strip the homeowner name from permit applicant fields. You receive the address and project value, not a personal-information database. Business applicants (LLC, Ltd, builder, developer) are retained.

Licence notice

The primary datasets underlying Shovel Radar products are published under open-government licences that explicitly permit commercial derived-work products, including:

City of Calgary Open Government Licence
Open Government Licence — Canada 2.0
Statistics Canada Open Licence
Individual city open-data licences (Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg — all OGL-Canada-compatible)

Shovel Radar does not redistribute raw datasets. We deliver trade-segmented, filtered, AI-enriched derived works — the transformation is the product. If you have specific questions about data lineage for a particular product, email matthew@shovelradar.com.