Just a recap on why the Stats Canada data exists. Many many years ago I was invited to a Treasury Board Open Data meeting which was a photo opportunity for the minister who shook us all by the hand. They were surprised that their Open Data license did not allow OpenStreetMap to use their data. That was open data license version one.
Six years later the version two license was released which appeared to be compatible with OSM. There are two versions one for federal government and one for other levels of government including municipalities. I met with Stats Canada and a few others and they had a project that needed buildings. By combining buildings with other data they could make money and there was a lot of demand for this sort of data from a number of agencies. Their initial plan had been to coax OSM mappers to use iD and draw the buildings from imagery but we now had a license that looked like it was compatible with OSM. Tracy, a open data prof at Ottawa Uni, identified a file that the City of Ottawa had that contained the buildings that could be used. It took a year to formally change the City of Ottawa open data license to the new Treasury Board one and then local mappers did the import. I managed to coax one of the Stats Canada managers to attend a SotM in Europe where he made some useful soft contacts. During the import process the license was challenged. Many European mappers at that time felt everything in OSM should be manually input. They have more mappers per square kilometer than we do. Mapbox got involved and the license basically queue jumped the LWG queue and was approved. Stats still had a problem. They wanted the data in OSM since that would be a single format and license but the municipalities each had their own license. It took them two years before Stats Canada's internal lawyers agreed that data given to them could be released under the federal government's open data license. Does it matter? Well I think 500,000 buildings were challenged to the DWG to be reverted since they had been imported too quickly. The license was correct. Occasionally one of the European mappers with nowt better to do challenges an import and the DWG will revert the import. If the municipalities can be convinced to change to the Federal Government's municipal license then you can do things like pull in the bus stops and a complete set of bus stops with their codes is very nice to have. If you look at Ottawa as an example there is a lot of City Open data in OSM. Cheerio John On Thu, 27 Nov 2025 at 16:16, wolfy1339 via Talk-ca < [email protected]> wrote: > The issue here is that Brampton replaced it's incompatible license > (mostly), with CC-BY 4.0, which needs an explicit waiver and there > currently isn't one. > > Hence why Kevin suggested using the data from StatsCan > > wolfy1339 > > > On 27/11/2025 4:03 pm, William Davis via Talk-ca wrote: > > For what it’s worth, I requested a review of Niagara’s licence from the > LWG and it was approved at their next meeting; I suspect this one would > also be a (fairly) quick approval if the only change is the name of the > municipality. > > — > William > > > On Nov 24, 2025, at 13:16, John Whelan <[email protected]> > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > Many Thanks, it's always better to review these things first. > > Cheerio John > On 2025-11-24 12:34 p.m., Kevin Farrugia wrote: > > Hey John, > > The addresses are in the StatsCan data, as when I ran Peel's open data > they informed me they were pulling out addresses from our site for their > program. > > If they pulled Peel's I don't see why they'd pull Brampton's separately > since Peel covers Brampton. > > So they can use the SC addresses as a source but not Brampton's since OSM > LWG considers the city's name changing in the license to be a new license. > > *Kevin* > > On Mon, Nov 24, 2025, 12:30 p.m. john whelan <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/GridRecce_Import/diary/407733 >> >> Does anyone know if the license works or if the data can be pulled in >> from stats canada? >> >> Thanks John >> _______________________________________________ >> Talk-ca mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca >> > _______________________________________________ > Talk-ca mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca > > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-ca mailing > [email protected]https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-ca mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca >
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