Launch of the Canadian Open Data Directory

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(1 minute videos at the bottom of the release)

Launch of the Canadian Open Data Directory

Canada's first crowdsourced, fully bilingual index of open data publishers across the country

Toronto, May 21st, 2026: The Canadian Open Data Society is announcing the launch of the Canadian Open Data Directory: a bilingual, searchable, crowdsourced directory that helps people quickly discover organizations publishing open data in Canada. The purpose of this directory is to support open data practitioners to find Canadian data publishers and their datasets.

The Directory currently highlights 250 organizations that produce open data across Canada and references over 100,000 datasets.  The publishing organizations span the public sector, nonprofits, and private industry, and each dataset can be accessed freely without payment.

Within the Directory's visualization, each bubble represents an organization providing open data. The bubble’s size reflects the number of open datasets they share.

Why the Directory matters to us all 

With misinformation proliferating, open data offers transparency for public debate and provides dependable, citable sources for decision making. Open data also plays an increasingly pivotal role in training the Artificial Intelligences (AI) or Large Language Models (LLM) being adopted throughout Canada. Verifiable data sources help reduce potential hallucinations, and these digital natural resources drive the development of Canadian machine learning and AI innovation with confidence.

The organizations sharing data are spread across the country. The Directory reflects organizations from different jurisdictional levels using a variety of publishing technologies.

While modern analytics and AI tools have made it easier for Canadians to create insights, applications, and visualizations, discovering reliable Canadian open datasets has been challenging and time-consuming. The Directory helps people explore open data from a topic and a geographical perspective.

The Canadian Open Data Directory closes that gap by offering a starting point that’s easy to search, easy to share, and designed to improve continuously through community contributions.

Built by volunteers

This Directory is a cross-country effort entirely built by volunteers.  Created by the Research Committee of the Canadian Open Data Society, the dataset was initiated and has been regularly updated by Lee Doucet (Windsor, ON). Further data work was contributed by students, while the story and data visualization experience were designed and developed by Eugene Chen (Edmonton, AB). The project is also supported by contributions from volunteers within the Society’s Research Committee, including initial prototyping and design by co-chair Janet Suek (Toronto, ON).

The Directory project was additionally informed by feedback from community stakeholders, gathered through conversations and Open Data Summits across Canada.

A searchable directory for multiple audiences

The directory is designed to serve:

• Members of the public looking for Canadian data they can trust and reuse

• Open data publishers who want their data portals to be easier to discover and access

• Researchers, journalists, and students who need a fast way to find public datasets by location 

• Civic tech and data community groups building projects, advocacy, training, and public-good tooling

  
  

The directory combines:

The Directory’s ‘Search’ feature provides instant results, showing users publishers according to the user’s chosen organization type

• A bilingual, crowdsourced dataset of open data publishers across Canada

• A searchable portal directory with organization details and links

• A visual data storytelling experience to make discovery approachable for first-time users

• A simple update process using a Google Sheet to let users add or edit their organization’s details

Image of the Google Sheet that users can directly add missing organizations, broken links, or updates to.

Quotes

“Open data isn’t useful if people can’t find it. This directory makes the discovery step faster, and it gets stronger the more the community improves it.” - Lee Doucet, Project Steward and Dataset Lead

“We wanted something practical that also told a story about Canadian open data: a place you can share in one link that helps people go from curiosity to a real dataset in a couple clicks, in English or French.” - Eugene Chen, Designer and Developer

“This is what community-built infrastructure looks like: volunteers working together to make open data easier to access, easier to use, and easier to keep current.” - Janet Suek, Co-chair, Research Committee

Partner support

The Canadian Open Data Directory has been supported by Link Digital, a partner recognized for helping governments, NGOs, and corporate clients create meaningful change through data, and for supporting open data initiatives and communities globally. Link Digital is also the co-steward of the CKAN project, the open source data management platform that drives open data portals like Canada's federal open data portal at https://open.canada.ca.

Videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJyoUVWYtKY

1m overview: What is the Canadian Open Data Directory?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WEHvxLbvvI

1m demo: Find multiple datasets in a minute

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppoVO3JX3Ns

What is the Canadian Open Data Society (from Link Digital)

Explore the directory

Canadian Open Data Directory: directory.opendatasociety.ca

About / Credits: directory.opendatasociety.ca/about

Add/Edit an organization: directory.opendatasociety.ca/update

Media + contact

Media inquiries: Eugene Chen, eugene@ideaowl.com

Organization: Canadian Open Data Society

media kit of images, Word doc of this