Canada Observatory
Data and charts for informed civic conversations
Canada Observatory exists to support informed conversations about Canada with relevant, timely, and reliable data. It provides interactive, regularly updated charts and downloadable data on the state of the country, organized around six themes: people & society, economy & affordability, government & public finances, health & well-being, land & environment, and education, science & innovation. All data comes from authoritative primary sources. The most frequently used sources are Statistics Canada and the OECD; however, other government and international organizations are used where they offer something valuable, authoritative, and unique. Most of the site content refreshes automatically. The code pipeline checks its sources daily, with updates to the plots happening when its source has released new data.
Where possible, Canada is shown alongside a broad set of 16 OECD peer countries (not just the G7) to provide meaningful international context.
Where the data allows, maps of data reach all the way down to the neighbourhood level.
Data files are freely downloadable in easy-to-use formats. This is done to help students, journalists, and anyone who wants easy-to-access Canadian data. While the original sources usually enable people to access their data, sometimes their formatting and access process creates barriers to more casual users. It is the hope of Canada Observatory that its content helps put data and information into the hands of all Canadians.
Start with these questions
The goal is to help you explore your own questions about Canada. To get started, here are a few big questions about the country, with links to the site’s related content:
- Is Canada becoming less affordable? — inflation, house prices, rents, and household debt
- Are incomes keeping up? — wages, real incomes, and poverty
- How do Canadian living standards compare with peer countries? — GDP per capita, productivity, and jobs
- Where is population growth coming from? — immigration, temporary residents, and natural increase
- How big is government, and what does it spend on? — debt, deficits, the public-service workforce, and federal spending
- Is crime going up? — everyday crime, hate crime, and your city, over time
- How fast is Canada warming? — national, regional, and city-level temperature trends
- How long do Canadians live? — a century of life expectancy, the peer comparison, and the recent dip
- How many children are Canadians having? — fertility over the long run, here and among peers
- What does my neighbourhood look like? — diversity, religion, incomes, and home values, mapped to the census tract
Topics
People & Society
How many people live in Canada and how its society is changing; diversity, religion, and crime & safety.
Sources: Statistics Canada, Toronto Police Service
Economy & Affordability
Growth, jobs, the cost of living, housing, and incomes & inequality.
Sources: OECD, Statistics Canada, Bank of Canada, CREA
Government & Public Finances
Debt, deficits, and interest costs compared with peers; the public-sector workforce; and what the federal government spends.
Sources: Statistics Canada, OECD, Treasury Board
Health & Well-being
Life expectancy, health spending and system capacity, population health and risk factors, substance use, and life satisfaction.
Sources: OECD, World Bank/WHO, PHAC, CIHI, World Happiness Report
Land & Environment
The land itself: ecozones, elevation, water, agriculture, wildfire. Also: climate change, air quality, emissions, and energy.
Sources: ECCC, NRCan, Statistics Canada, OECD, Our World in Data
Education, Science & Innovation
University tuition across provinces and fields, R&D spending, and Canada’s research workforce.
Sources: Statistics Canada, OECD
Principles
- Authoritative sources only — Statistics Canada, OECD, and other government, international, and research agencies
- Broad peer comparisons — Canada and 16 OECD peers, not just the G7
- Automatically updated — the data pipeline checks its sources daily; update frequency varies by source
- Open and downloadable — all cleaned data available as CSV to empower Canadians
- No policy advocacy — we present the data, sources, and methods to support informed discussion. There is one deliberate exception: we advocate for the creation, use, and open availability of public data itself. Without it, nothing on this site could exist.