Submission to the Canada Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics Monday, February 14, 2011 Second hour 4:30-5:30 PM Ottawa

1. Submission To: Submission By:
Standing Committee on Access to Tracey P. Lauriault
Information, Privacy and Ethics Address
613-234-2805
Monday, February 14, 2011 tlauriau@gmail.com
Second hour 4:30-5:30 PM http://traceyplauriault.ca/
http://datalibre.ca/
Ottawa https://communitydata-donneescommunautaires.ca/
https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Overview
Study on Open Government
A view from local community and university based research
Introduction:
Neighbourhoods are where Canadians live. Canadians may be engaged globally, nationally,
provincially and territorially, in cities, counties or rural municipalities, but, at the end of the day, most
of us have the good fortune to go home, that point on the map located in a loosely defined place called
a neighbourhood. We are also members of communities, which can be associated with how we look,
our physical abilities, culture, the languages we speak, the schools we attend, where we come from,
political affiliation, religious or not, social, technological, professional, academic, sports, economic
class and any number of other affiliations and demographics. Canada is a great northern mosaic of
communities made up of individuals who live within and span across its thousands of large and small,
rural and urban neighbourhoods and cities.
Community groups form part of Canada's civil society organizations, the volunteer or third
sector and not-for-profit organizations. They serve a critically important function in the Canadian
democratic system. These groups are thematically organized around social, political, religious,
demographic, economic, social justice or environmental issues, and they act locally even if tied into
national or global affiliations or networks. Their role, like the private sector, is to do what the
government does not or cannot do for any variety of reasons. Community groups advocate on behalf of
children, the poor, the homeless, elderly, environment, ethno-cultural visible minorities, women, public
transit, population and social determinants of health and myriad other issues. Many community groups
also centre their efforts around information communications and technology such as access to public
data1, open government, open data, community wireless, broadband access, open source software,
online mapping, etc. They alert government to issues particular to their mandates and work towards
improving the quality of our lives, societies and communities. They keep government accountable and
they do so by using data to inform evidence based public policy solutions.
Data are used by community groups : to inform human services plans2, poverty reduction
strategies3, sustainable development4, place based health strategies5, community economic
development6, homeless7, food security8, ethno cultural visible minority issues9, aboriginal peoples10,
etc. A number of community groups also use geospatial data to assess where the issues are in their
cities or to share cultural information about their communities.11
Example - 2 Canadian Intensive Public Data Using Non Government Organizations
1) The Community Data Consortium
The Community Data Consortium 12, a project of the Canadian Council on Social
Development13, is an example of a community based organization that acts in 17 regional data consortia
which share infrastructure, best practices and data between and among a community based knowledge
network of 850+ experts. Consortia members include cities, regional municipalities, county

2. governments, school boards, social planning and development councils, police forces, community
health and resource centres. The Consortium has created an open source Drupal workspace and
website which includes a catalog of group purchased Statistics Canada Data. “Drupal is an open source
content management platform powering millions of websites and applications” (drupal.org). The
catalog contains close to a million dollars worth of public data. Anyone can search the data, however,
due to Statistics Canada's restrictive licensing and cost recovery policies, the Consortium can only
allow members to access this government-collected data. The data are aggregated into local
geographies (e.g. StatCan DA, neighbourhood, wards, health districts) and there are a number of
specially ordered cross-tabulations.
The 17 consortia leaders (soon to be 20) meet quarterly to discuss research, licensing, dataset
orders, direct activities, local initiatives etc. They also come together once a year in a face to face
meeting. The Consortium has an executive which includes the President of the CCSD and consortia
leaders. It helps form the strategic direction of the Consortium and guides the answering of key
questions such as: “what should the Consortium do if there is no Long-Form Census?” or “What other
strategic data sets should the Consortia negotiate to access or acquire from Federal Government
Departments?”. The Consortium has a number of working groups (WG) comprised of consortia leaders
and members at large. The Capacity and Infrastructure WG, for instance, helped design the website
and the structure of the catalog to ensure it meets user needs. It teaches other consortia to use the data,
search the catalog, add content to the website and build local community based research capacity. The
Data Purchase and Access WG has just conducted a survey to assess what data should be acquired next,
how users would like those data aggregated, the themes they would like covered and the scale at which
they would like to have those data licensed. This group is also tasked with searching and proposing
datasets from other federal, provincial and territorial governments, associations or the private sector.
This is a particularly pressing issue due to the uncertainties with the Census. There is an Ad Hoc Data
super-user group which is also called upon to answer specific data questions. A Partnership and
Outreach WG aims to grow membership and also to develop relationships with public data providers at
all scales. Finally, there is a working group which aims to disseminate and promote the work done by
members.
The Consortium also maintains an inventory of cataloged data resources available in Canada for
free or fee which are specifically aggregated at municipal and sub municipal scales. In Canada,
unfortunately, federal agencies do not aggregate their data in a standardized way nor is there a focus or
interest in aggregating these at city and sub-city geographies. Community based researchers, whether
in cities or non government organizations, require data aggregated in this way to target their planning
and outreach efforts strategically, since location in a city or community is important. For instance, we
may want to know if there are x number of people in a neighbourhood or city with characteristics y
who require services z, such as housing, support, etc.. The Social Planning Council of Ottawa
Disability14 Profile tells us that in 2006 “149,425 and people in Ottawa had disabilities, representing
17.7% of Ottawa’s population. This represents a 20.7% increase since 2001 (25,625 more individuals)”
which is informative, but report improves our knowledge as it also presents information showing where
the highest and lowest concentrations are located along with a variety of other social demographic data.
This provides planners, service providers and outreach workers with the information they need to focus
their efforts and to situate services.
The Community Data Consortium Members page (https://communitydata-
donneescommunautaires.ca/MembersList) provides readers with a list of consortia, WGs, their
members, and information on the types of public data rich products produced in communities across
Canada.
2) FCM Quality of Life Reporting System

3. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities Quality of Life Reporting15 Systems measures,
monitors and reports on social, economic and environmental trends in Canada´s largest cities and
communities. The QoLRS is a member-based initiative with 24 communities in seven provinces.
QoLRS reports and statistics correspond to the municipal boundaries of member communities.
Relying on data from a variety of public data sources, the QoLRS contains hundreds of variables that
measure changes in 10 domains16 such as: Demographic Background and Information; Civic
Engagement; Community Infrastructure; Education, and the Environment to name a few. This includes
86 indicators relying on close to 200 data variables tracked consistently overtime. Data sources are
from: many Federal Departments (e.g. CMHC, HRSDC, Industry Canada, Environment Canada;
Elections Canada, etc.) and associated divisions; provincial governments, not for profit organizations
and the 24 communities involved.
The FCM QoLRS has innovatively developed a Municipal Data Collection Tool (MDCT) which
allows all 24 participating communities to add their locally collected data. Each city, municipality or
metropolitan community has appointed an official who is tasked to scour their administrations in search
of colleagues, experts and data holders on a variety of issues such as the number of: daycares; social
housing units; homeless shelter beds; women elected in municipal government and voter turnout;
recreation centre fees; cost of public transit, etc. The MDCT allows for each community to provide
context with how these data were collected, when they were collected, who the data holders are and a
number of other metadata elements. In addition, since each community has its particularities or ways
of doing things around each of these QoLRS indicator themes, the MDCT enables the provision of
qualifying information for each dataset. This provides analysts with the knowledge they need to
effectively create comparable indicators across all 24 communities and include any interpretative
caveats and explanations. In June, a QoLRS online and interactive data visualization tool will be
released which will allow users to explore variables across time and between communities on an
indicator basis while also enabling data downloads.
The reporting system is also used to publish thematic reports17, which examine specific local
trends. Taken together, these trends form issues of national importance. The release of a national
thematic report is also accompanied by simultaneous releases of local reports which present indicators
specific to each community and framed around the local context. As stated earlier, Canada is a nation
comprised of unique places and communities, and while issues and themes can be discussed at a
national level accompanied by national solutions, there are always local particularities which which
warrant local attention and locally specific implementations.
Example - Unversity Based Research Centre
The Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre (GCRC)
The Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre (GCRC)18 is an official Research Centre in
the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.
GCRC research focuses on the application of geographic information processing and management to
the analysis of socio-economic issues of interest to society at a variety of scales from the local to the
international. The GCRC conducts research on a variety of themes: Open Source; Interoperability;
Cartographic Visualization; and Archiving and Preservation of Data. The GCRC is directed by
Distinguished Research Professor and Royal Society Fellow Dr. D. R. Fraser Taylor. Dr. Taylor is
internationally renown for his work in cybercartography. In addition Dr. Taylor is a member of the
international CODATA Task Group on Preservation and Access to Scientific and Technical Data in
Developing Countries19 and a member of the Group on Earth Observations System of Systems
(GEOSS) Data Sharing Task Force20. In September 2009 he was appointed to the United Nations
Expert Group on Global Geographic Information Management21. Dr. Taylor is also a Board member of
the OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) Interoperability Institute22 and the OGC Global Advisory

4. Council23. Currently Dr. Taylor is Chair of the International Steering Committee for Global Mapping
(ISCGM)24 an international body involving the national mapping agencies of over 170 nations and
regions including Antarctica
The GCRC also produces cybercartographic Atlases25 using location a key organizing principle.
Cybercartography is a new multimedia, multisensory and interactive online way of representing data.
These atlases create narratives from a variety of different perspectives and include both quantitative
and qualitative information. These include stories, art, literature and music as well as socio-economic
and environmental information. Atlases are created in transdisciplinary contexts and centrered around
the following research themes: Indigenous knowledge; Northern Research; Cinema; Risk of
Homelessness.
The GCRC primarily receives public funds and therefore adheres to the ideal that the results of
its publicly funded research belongs to the public. Wherever possible data are acquired from openly
accessible sources, and if data are collected by the Centre and its research partners these to are shared
provided these do not reveal sacred aboriginal place, private information, and environmentally sensitive
or at risk sites. Atlases are produced using open source software and open APIs and all code is made
available under and open BSD license In addition, atlases are designed using open standards and
specifications as well as adhering to interoperability standards. Much of the GCRCs work is conducted
in Canada's north with many Inuit and other indigenous communities. The Centre is engaged in
capacity building in the north and its atlases are used in classroom settings and content is often
contributed by local youth or in participatory mapping settings with local elders such as the Inuit Sea
Ice Use and Occupancy Project26 which was funded by the International Polar Year Research Project.
Finally, since bandwidth is a problem in the north, the GCRC has helped set up local area networks to
ensure ongoing access. It is important to note, that while some of the data contributed are kept from
the view of the general public for the previously discussed reasons, these are made fully available on
the LANs with special viewing permissions on a community by community basis. The GCRC atlas
tools allow for special authoring and viewing permissions which allow elders and researchers to control
who and how their data can be viewed and the associated rights of use thereof. Data access is
community specific in this case due to the cultural, spiritual, historical and environmentally sensitive
contexts within which these are produced.
Open Government in Canada
1.Why move towards open government?
Civil society organizations in Canada's knowledge based economy are quite sophisticated in
how they use data to inform public policy discussions. The volunteer and third sectors require data to
fulfill their mandates, in some cases to help some of Canada's most vulnerable citizens. Community
based research organizations play an important role in Canada's democratic system and alert Canadians
to a number of social, environmental and economic issues that the government and the private sector
have missed. They also help keep government accountable to all of its citizens. Community based
researchers require access to public data sets to inform evidence-based decision making in their
communities and nationally on a variety of issues of importance to the social, psychological and
physical well being of Canadians. Open Government, in the case of this submission, open government
policy to access to public data, will allow these organizations and citizens alike to better participate in
the formation of Canadian policy. An open access to data policy will make their work easier and and
more efficient.
The Community Data Consortium, the FCM Quality of Life Reporting System and the
Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre are illustrative examples of what approximately 1000+
researchers and city officials involved in these community or university based and not for profit
organizations do in spite of a lack of open government policies in Canada. These are a subset of

5. Canada's heavy public data users who are trying to improve the quality of life in their respective
communities and their work is laudatory in the face of the following issues:
• Lack of public data standards in terms of format, quality and level of aggregation
◦ Aggregation is a particular problem since federal agencies do not perceive they have a
mandate to organize their data according to the local geographies. The data are generally
aggregated at national, provincial, territorial, census metropolitan area and if it is a good day
at the scale of the city. Data at these scales preclude sub-municipal analysis. The loss of the
Long Form Census is particularly problematic for communities.
• Regressive cost recovery policies which force organizations to fund-raise in order to purchase
publicly funded data such as those with a Statistics Canada provenance. Other costly data are
basic vital statistics, postal code files, geographic files, and housing data. Homelessness
advocates often quip “you have to mortgage the house in order to buy data for which you have
already paid to effectively study homelessness in this country”. It is better to have these
agencies invest in research and results rather than searching for funds to purchase public
datasets which they have already paid for through taxation.
• Restrictive or non interoperable data licensing which force non government organizations to be
exclusive with their data acquisitions. Depending on the license this can lead to: a) excluding
groups who cannot afford the data or who are not in a university; b) narrowing the
dissemination of acquired data and associated analysis; c) precluding the re-purposing of data as
permission to use was granted for a specific purpose only, d) controlling the type of messaging
as some government agencies do not like the type of results yielded from a particular analysis,
or e) forcing community organizations who do not have legal council on staff or cannot afford it
to try and interpret and then adhere to the multiple and often conflicting license stipulations.
• No data access policy: government officials have no clear understanding of what to do. Most
officials guess at best. Due to a general climate of risk averseness officials often err on the side
of caution and arbitrarily decide to not share their data. Reasons for access refusal are mostly
not provided, and officials may avoid the issue by not returning calls or allowing for long lapses
of time before responding in the hope that the researcher requesting the data gives up. The
researchers referred to in this submission are in no way interested in private data, nor are they
dealing with issues related to national or personal security, and are therefore not requesting the
release of sensitive data. An example of some of the data request responses received are “my
manager said no”, “administrative data are for the government only”, “that is only to inform
programs; why would you want those?”, “we don't do that”, “my boss will get mad if you say
something he/she does not like and I will get into trouble”, “that is too much work” or a very
high and unsubstantiated price is applied.
• Absent data discovery mechanisms, in other words there is no central place in almost all federal
departments, agencies and crown corporations where researchers can browse a catalog to see an
institutions data resources. This makes finding data a time consuming and frustrating process.
Administrative data are not centrally managed in any department, in some cases officials
exclusively oversea a particular dataset that serves their particular mandate and do not have the
means or desire to share and describe those datasets either within the institution or publicly.
There have been instances where an official changes jobs, the position remains unfilled and the
data are lost with re-purposing of the computer on which they were stored or with changes in
storage arrangements. Further, researchers are forced to make numerous cold calls to find a
dataset or even to find someone who understands the request. This is particularly troublesome
when collecting hundreds of data sets consistently over time across many departments and
many jurisdictions.

6. • Absence of metadata: data about the data provide researchers with the information they need to
make fit for use decisions, to assess their reliability and accuracy, the time when created for
doing time series analysis and so on. Metadata help with discovery and explain what the data
are and is a necessary component on a data management strategy.
• No research data management and sharing: University research is mostly reliant on public funds
in Canada, yet Canadian researchers do not have to share nor manage their data. Canadians are
therefore not able to access the research data they paid for. Further, funding agencies do not
have an infrastructure in place to ingest the data created during the course of research, which
also precludes the possibility of other researchers building upon each others work or
serendipitously making new discoveries with previously collected data.
• Absence of archiving and preservation strategies: research data are national knowledge assets,
national resources and are heritage artifacts, and these should be preserved for the long-term.
Longitudinal analysis is what helps us understand trends socially and to track changes in the
environment overtime. Data collected once can be re-purposed many times which simply adds
to their value. Library and Archives Canada does not have the means to accept and organize
data, and most university repositories only collect papers or works from their alumni, while
government offices have uneven data management policies.
• Lack of research funding for those who use data in their research or who conduct research about
data: funding is available for research and often not for the purchase of data let alone its
management. It is very difficult to find funding in Canada for community based research, and
particularly difficult for organizations such as the Community Data Consortium which builds
infrastructure, manages data and forms capacity for community data researchers, but does not
conduct research itself.
2.Which public data should the government make available
The following are the data most requested by community and university researchers. Other
Committee submissions will have covered access to data associated with governmental transparency.
The following is a sample of potential datasets.
i. Datasets that can easily be put online in a free, discoverable, understandable and machine-readable
format which do not compromise privacy or national security:
• Create a culture of openness based on principles that sharing is the first order and where the
option to not share has to be rigorously debated. The reverse is currently the norm.
• Statistics Canada's Data – particularly census data and Taxfiler data
• All other demographic data collected by other agencies (e.g. CIC, HRSDC, Indian and Northern
Affairs, etc.)
• Statistics Canada's Geographic Files
• Environment Canada's data
• Natural Resources Canada geospatial data, and geospatial data collected by any other agencies
or departments
• Canada Centre for Remote Sensing data - Radarsat and Remote Sensing imagery
• All Health geographic boundary files
• Aggregated health care data and health care administrative data
• Canada post geographic postal code files and postal code lookup files
• Department administrative data irrespective of its current level of aggregation
• Memoranda to Cabinet

7. • Data about Canada's treaties and contested areas
ii. What information should not be made available
• Locations of environmentally “at risk” or sensitive areas
• Locations of Aboriginal hunting and fishing grounds
• Location of Aboriginal sacred sites unless explicit permission to do so are provided
• Data of importance to national security (e.g. explicit location of troops)
• Data that would put people's personal security at risk (e.g. the location of abused women's &
children's shelters).
• Data that would violate people's privacy
• Data should always be aggregated into widely recognized geographic units
◦ Dissemination Area, Census tract, Neighbourhoods, wards, census divisions, census sub-
divisions, health districts, federal electoral boundaries, provinces and territorial boundaries,
etc.
iii. Transforming how information is created and saved to enable easy evaluation and uploading
• Adhere to open and interoperable data formats
• Provide data transformation services online
• Reduce the reliance on proprietary software unless open source software cannot reliably provide
that particular service
• Provide suitable metadata
• create robust data catalogs that are easy for data producers to upload to
3. How should the federal government move towards open government?
The Government of Canada has some excellent examples in place which it can learn from:
• The creation of Canada's Geospatial Data Infrastructure provides a model of how a
government institution can work with multiple stakeholders and build a robust user
needs driven and open architecture data infrastructure
• GeoConnections Program
• Geogratis Program and its unrestricted User Licence
• GeoBase Program and its unrestricted User Licence
• The Data Liberation Initiative
• GCPedia
A secretariat can be created spanning departmental and agency boundaries and using key
operational and policy staff to direct data management and dissemination. The secretariat should
require data to be released unless specific procedures are followed to demonstrate otherwise. The
secretariat should be resourced to educate citizens and government that good data is essential for good
democracy, and that publicly funded data resources belong to the citizenry.
Those developing policy and legislation on data should
• Tap into the human resources who are currently discussing this issue in GCPedia
• Look for ideas from those involved in #w2p (web 2.0 practitioners)
• Consult with those who have successfully and solidly built data dissemination programs
at Natural Resources Canada, who have many years of experience and have built robust

8. open-architecture systems and have services in place for the dissemination of many
types of datasets.
• Speak to Canada's top scientists at NRCan and the National Research Council of
Canada, Environment Canada, Agriculture Canada and the Canadian Space Agency who
already have experience in disseminating and managing data
4.Ways to Consult with the data users
Three examples of successful data user and data creation organizations have been provide that
the government can consult with. These three work in a way that would be conducive to an open
government way of working. Other important entities:
• See the organizations in the long list of those opposed to the changes to the long for Census,
they are all heavy data users or producers or policy analysts (http://datalibre.ca/census-watch/)
• Canadian Association of Research Librarians (http://www.carl-abrc.ca/about/about-e.html)
• Canadian Association of Public Data Users (http://capdu.wordpress.com/ )
• CODATA Canada (http://www.codata.org/canada/)
• Canadian Team – International Association for Social Science and Information Services and
Technology (IASSIST) (http://www.iassistdata.org/about/index.html )
• Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives (ACMLA) (http://www.acmla.org/)
• National Statistical Council of Canada
• International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems
(http://www.interpares.org/ip2/ip2_index.cfm)
• W3C – Canada - http://www.w3.org/
• All Canadian Open Data Cities to hear lessons learned and to adopt best practices. Official
cities and also local citizen groups (http://datalibre.ca/links-resources/)
• There are numerous other agencies doing excellent work.
It is important to consult, but it is also equally important to implement easy short term solutions
while concurrently consulting with users and experts to build for the long term. A new way of working
is important. Any strategy will have to rebuild trust, act on recommendations and then adequately fund
and collaboratively build the solution in partnership with those the government consulted.
5.Open government in a Canadian context: due consideration to official languages, Crown
copyright, privacy, confidentiality and security.
The technology to deliver the data and the metadata must be bilingual. However, it is often
unnecessary and unrealistic to create databases in both official languages except where language is
central to those databases. Administrative databases should be made available in the language within
which they were created – English or French with a thesaurus in both languages to assist access. Much
research in Canada is not made publicly available as the agency that funded the data does not have the
resources to translate the findings (e.g. HRSDC). Those research results then remain inaccessible to
all. In that case, titles and abstracts should be translated and the research should be made accessible in
the language within which it was produced.
Canada can maintain Crown Copyright and license the data under an ODC-By as did the
governments of New Zealand, Australia and the UK, all of which are countries that have Westminster
governments like Canada's and also have Crown Copyright. In addition, the ODC-PDDL is being
recommended as a license See the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), Open
Licensing and Risk Management: A Comparison of the City of Ottawa Open License, the ODC-By
License and the ODC-PDDL License, Draft 2 (February 2011) report which compares these licenses

9. (http://www.cippic.ca/open-licensing/). CIPPIC and the Centre for Law Technology and Society at the
University of Ottawa have researchers who are experts in these fields and should be consulted
(http://www.techlaw.uottawa.ca/en/programs/technology-law/home.html). Also be sure that the top
academics are involved in this process (E.g. Ron Diebert and Tim Wu at the Munk School for Global
Affairs, CIPPIC, Darin Barney at Mcgill, Prof. Fraser Taylor, etc.)
6.Recommendations
Start now!
1. Immediately create in each Federal department and Agency a new position called Chief Data
Officer (CDO) whose first task is to conduct an comprehensive inventory of all data sets within
it and to collaborate with all the other CDOs on how best to manage, maintain, catalog, and
disseminate those data. Evolve this group into an appropriately resourced secretariat for open
data.
2. Create a government of Canada Open Data site modelled on one of the Catalogs created by the
Open Data cities and start populating it with data. Ensure that in the long term all existing
government of Canada data catalogs interoperate and that one portal facilitates searching them
all. Populate that with data that are readily available.
3. Develop a list of the best open data thinkers and builders in Canada, both within and outside of
government, and establish working groups with the explicit purpose of creating an Open Data
Infrastructure for Canada (ODIC).
4. Solicit public input on the strategy for ODIC and provide appropriate resources to implement it.
5. Adopt a data licensing policy such as ODC-By or ODC-PDDL
6. Provide Statistics Canada with funding to replace the revenue made from charges for public
data that are provided without additional analysis.
Acknowledgements:
I would like to thank John Nash, Professor (retired), Telfer School of Management, University of
Ottawa for copy editing this submission. Also, thanks are extended to those who submitted suggestions
for the Submission on the CivicAccess.ca listserve. In addition I would like to thank all of the
researchers, city officials and federal government officials who I have worked with on a variety of
projects that have required the use of and access to public data.

10. 1 CivicAccess.ca (http://civicaccess.ca), Montréal Ouvert (http://montrealouvert.net/), Open data links and resources
(http://datalibre.ca/links-resources/), Academic paper on the topic of effective data pen data: Empowering the
empowered or effective data use for everyone? by Michael Gurstein. First Monday, Volume 16, Number 2 - 7 February
2011 (http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/3316/2764)
2 Region of Waterloo Human Services Plan
(http://www.region.waterloo.on.ca/web/region.nsf/DocID/51F4AF0E6223B2CB8525722D006E7B84!OpenDocument)
3 Canadian Social Research Links (http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/antipoverty.htm). Gilles Séguin maintains this
great list of social initiatives in Canada as his volunteer contribution to the sector.
4 Éco-quartier (http://www.ecoquartier.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=37&Itemid=42), Pembina
Institute (http://www.pembina.org), Ecojustice (http://www.ecojustice.ca/)
5 Health disparity in Saskatoon: analysis to intervention. Saskatoon: Saskatoon Health Region, Lemstra M, Neudorf C.
2008, (http://www.saskatoonhealthregion.ca/your_health/documents/PHO/HealthDisparityRept-complete.pdf)
6 Community Economic Development Network (http://www.ccednet-rcdec.ca/)
7 FCM Quality of Life Reporting System Report on Trends and Issues in Affordable Housing and Homelessness in
Canada (http://www.fcm.ca//CMFiles/qol20081VVM-3272008-3162.pdf), Homelessness and Housing Family Initiatives
System (HIFIS) Social Planning Council of Winnipeg (http://www.spcw.mb.ca/hifis/index.html)
8 The People's Food Policy (http://peoplesfoodpolicy.ca/), Food Banks Canada (http://foodbankscanada.ca/?
CFID=9940624&CFTOKEN=fc7874db30d9060a-0FBDEFE4-C0AE-E7FB-DAF5743543EEC596)
9 he Canadian Council for Refugees (http://ccrweb.ca/ ), See the groups involved in the Census Court Challenge: The
Equal Right to be Counted (http://socialplanningtoronto.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Save-the-CensusPR.pdf )
10 Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (http://www.itk.ca)
11 Social Planning Network of Ontario Geographic and Numeric Information Systems (GANIS) (http://ganis.spno.ca/about),
Kitikmeot Place Names Atlas (http://www.kitikmeotheritage.ca/atlas.htm).
12 Community Data Consortium – Consortium des données Communautaires
(https://communitydata-donneescommunautaires.ca)
13 Canadian Council on Social Development (CCSD) - Conseil canadien de développement social (CCDS)
(http://ccsd.ca)
About the Canadian Council on Social Development For more than 90 years, the Canadian Council on Social
Development (CCSD) has been a key proponent of “unconventional” policies and programs that Canadians now
consider essential. In the 1920s we helped shape the first Old Age Pension program. In the 1950s, we were champions of
Unemployment Insurance. In this decade, we demonstrated why the National Child Benefit and tax credits for the
working poor are wise investments.
Through our research and partnerships with organizations across the country, we continue to act as a catalyst for
innovative, evidence-based approaches to reducing poverty and building resilient, hopeful thriving Canadian
communities.
14 Disability Profile of the City of Ottawa: A Profile of Persons with Disabilities in Ottawa, Based on the 2006 Census
November, 2010, Social Planning Council of Ottawa
(http://www.spcottawa.on.ca/sites/spcottawa.on.ca/files/pdf/2010/Publications/Disability%20Report%20Final%20with
%20maps.pdf).
15 Quality of Life Reporting System (QoLRS) of the FCM - Système de rapports sur la qualité de vie (SRQDV) de la
FCM
(Eng. - fr-http://www.fcm.ca/Francais/View.asp?mp=1237&x=1115
16 Table of Domains and Indicators for the FCM Quality of Life Reporting System (QoLRS)
(http://www.fcm.ca/CMFiles/QofL%20Indicator%20grid_en.pdf) and data (http://www.fcm.ca/english/View.asp?
mp=767&x=782)
17 FCM QoLRS Thematic Reports: (http://www.fcm.ca/english/View.asp?mp=1115&x=767)
18 Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre (https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Overview)
19 CODATA Preservation of and Access to Scientific and Technical Data in Developing Countries
(http://www.codata.org/taskgroups/TGpreservation/index.html)
20 Group on Earth Observations System of Systems (GEOSS) Data Sharing Task Force (http://www.earthobservations.org/)
21 United Nations Expert Group on Global Geographic Information Management (http://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo/)
22 OGC Interoperability Institute (http://www.ogcii.org/)
23 OGC Global Advisory Council (http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/organization/gac)
24 International Steering Committee for Global Mapping (ISCGM) (http://www.iscgm.org/cgi-bin/fswiki/wiki.cgi)
25 GCRC Atlases (https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Atlases)
26 Inuit Sea Ice Use and Occupancy Project
(https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/ISIUOP/Inuit+Sea+Ice+Use+and+Occupancy+Project+(ISIUOP))