Last week, Statistics Canada (StatCan) announced the launch of the Centre for Municipal and Local Data portal, designed to provide Canadians with more data and insights about the country’s economy, society, and environment at a local level.
With this announcement, StatCan deepens its partnership with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) to raise awareness and expand the use of StatCan’s data, and strengthen data literacy and reduce data gaps in all communities.
The portal is also part of StatCan’s Disaggregated Data Action Plan (DDAP), aimed at highlighting the experiences of specific demographics, including women, Indigenous populations, racialized groups and people with disabilities.
“As the level of government closest to the everyday lives of Canadians, municipalities depend on reliable data to make important policy decisions that are impactful, equitable, inclusive, and will improve Canadians’ quality of life in tangible ways,” said FCM chief executive officer, Carole Saab. “FCM congratulates StatCan on its new portal and looks forward to continuing to work together to advance the data-related needs of municipalities.”
The new portal includes the following:
- A data integration and visualisation tool displaying a set of key indicators geographically.
- A data catalogue of stats and indicators relevant to municipalities, including housing, health, and crime.
- A municipal mapping function which shows a geographic presentation of socio-economic and demographic conditions at the census subdivision (CSD) level.
- A municipal financial and socioeconomic dashboard to explore data on a specific city and enable comparisons across 35 Canadian cities.
The portal will continue to be updated to reflect changing data needs of municipal governments, according to the government of Canada release.
Hugh O’Reilly, executive director at Innovate Cities, a Toronto-based non-profit organization leveraging data to advance smart city technologies in Canada, said that the initiative to “provide a centralized data portal, analytical tools and the ability to combine different data sets is an important step forward for the Canadian innovation system.”
“Initiatives like this one help turn words into action,” he added.