Company Register / 2013 45% open

What data is expected?

List of registered (limited liability) companies including name, unique identifier and additional information such as address, registered activities. The submissions in this data category does not need to include detailed financial data such as balance sheet etc.

What data is available

•   Does the data exist? Yes
•   Is data in digital form? Yes
•   Publicly available? Yes
•   Is the data available for free? Yes
•   Is the data available online? Yes (Here)
•   Is the data machine readable? No (HTML)
•   Available in bulk? No
•   Openly licensed? No (No URL given)
•   Is the data provided on a timely and up to date basis? Yes

Details

Because Canada is a federation of provinces and territories, these data would be considered incomplete, as companies are also registered, sometimes exclusively at those jurisdictions. A complete picture would require going to each jurisdiction and assessing their degree of openness. This response is solely for the federal / national level. These data are however generally incomplete, are destroyed every 7 years as per the tax act and are inconsistently managed. They are also not easily available to the public. While these national scale data meet many of the OKFN criteria, the fact that they are incomplete, inaccurate and destroyed every seven years is problematic, especially regarding transparency and investigations into money laundering. Furthermore, they are not readily accessible by the data producer, you can find a company but not a list of all the companies. Also, the Corporations Canada database "does NOT include corporations created under financial legislation (such as financial institutions, insurance companies or loan and trust companies) or those created under provincial/territorial legislation or corporate legislation from another jurisdiction." See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_company_registers#Canada