[2] A number of efforts have been made to expose data gathered by Canadian governments of all levels in ways that make it available for mashups.
On March 17, 2011, Stockwell Day, then president, announced the launch of the 12-month pilot period for Canada's national open data site.
[8] These ten announcements are: Announced in 2023, Statistics Canada recently embarked upon an exploratory initiative which aims to enhance the use and harmonization of open building data from government sources, for the purpose of contributing to the creation of a complete, comprehensive and open database of buildings in Canada.
On July 19, 2011, the Province of British Columbia launched DataBC, Canada's second provincial open data site.
John Anzin was the grand prize winner as the designer of the best Web App in the Apps4Climate Action Apps contest held on September 16, 2010, at the Vancouver Aquarium, and attended by the Honourable John Yap, Minister of State for Climate Action.
VELO is a web app for businesses that encourages GHG emissions reduction through measurement and benchmarking internally and against peers.
The app allows users to create visuals of an organization's emissions by numerous parameters, e.g. geography, branch, division, year, etc.
[15] In 2011, Ontario's minister of research and innovation, Glen Murray announced on Twitter that the province had an open data project "being built over the next few months”.
Data sets hosted on the portal focus on topics such as business and economy, communities and social services, government administration, nature and environment.
[22] The mandate letter directed the Minister to develop an open data repository in support of economic diversification in the innovation, science, and IT sectors, and to increase the amount of information available to citizens.
[27] NOTE: Open data in Canada dates back to the 1970s with the sharing of satellite imagery, the Data Liberation Initiative in the early 1990s, Geogratis and Geobase at the turn of the millennia, the Information Commissioner's call for Open Government, and any number of other civil society actions and events.
On September 1, 2010, Canada's Access to Information and Privacy Commissioners issued an Open Government Resolution,[29][30] but this does not have the force of law.
It included a commitment to create a national open data site opendata.gc.ca / donneesouvertes.gc.ca on which to "make as many government datasets as possible available".
[33] The House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics (ETHI), 40th Parliament, 3rd Session was conducting a study of Open Government.