I just wanted to let you know that your ranking of Canadian corporate data is not accurate. The data that is accessible for companies created federally only. It excludes all companies registered and created under provincial law, which is the bulk of them. It also excludes financial institutions.
I would seriously reconsider your ranking for Canada. When you compare it to the UK where all corporate data is free and financial and ownership information is accessible Canada lags miles behind. Only financial data of listed Canadian companies is available and that is it. Financial information of all private firms is private and you have to pay to get ownership and director details of private firms.
Information on Federal Corporation is available through Industry Canada (current organization name: Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada) on Canada’s Open Government portal under the Open Government Licence - Canada. Data are freely available online in .XML format and can be downloaded all at once in a single .ZIP file. They contain information such as company name, identification number, and address, and are updated on a weekly basis. However, the dataset does not include information about corporations created under financial legislation (such as financial institutions, insurance companies or loan and trust companies) or those created under provincial, territorial or other corporate legislation. The dataset provider has not responded as to where such information can be found.
Do you have any sense of the proportion of Canadian companies which are registered federally?
If most companies are registered provincially, I don’t see why the reviewer considers this dataset as 100% open.
Bonjour Samuel,
Je n’ai pas les compétences pour les données d’entreprises des provinces du Reste du Canada (ROC, Common Law). Au Québec, il y a le Registre des entreprises pour celles qui sont sous juridiction québécoise (droit civil).
Un des problèmes avec le GODI et l’index local pour le Canada, c’est que les règles mêmes des index ne tiennent pas compte des nations fédérées comme celles au Canada. De facto, le Québec est distinct du ROC… et cela sans faire de politique.
Ageeed. The data should not show as 100% score as only about 10% of companies are federally incorporated, meaning the bulk of companies are not included in this data set.
Sadly the provincial scores on public availability range from mostly 0 up to 35. Canada’s score is too high on the ranking for this website. Open Corporates is much better as an assessment of available Canadian corporate data. Most provinces require that you pay and go via a corporate registry agent just to confirm that an entity exists, let alone learn anything about shareholders and accounts. In Canadian provinces accounts don’t even need to be provided to provincial registries so there is not even the ability to ever access them unless the firm is listed on a stock exchange.