Government portal does not meet open-data requirements

Academic and IT experts have acknowledged that serious problems exist with the Conservative government’s online Portal, and that many of its data sets are unusable. In addition, a parliamentary committee study has shown that Canadian businesses have been unable to gain access to this highly valuable economic data.

“The President of the Treasury Board continues to laud the Portal, and boast how useful and user-friendly it is, but in truth no new data has been entered and it’s useless to the ordinary citizen,” said NDP Treasury Board critic Mathieu Ravignat (Pontiac).

"Furthermore, ever since they scrapped the long form census, the government’s rhetoric on open, transparent data has lost all credibility,” added Anne-Marie Day (Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles). “How can the government claim to be making useful data more available when it continues to cut out highly essential statistics?”

At several meetings of the Government Operations and Estimates Committee, data users expressed concerned about data selection being controlled by the government – a move that clearly flies in the face of their motto of transparency.