Government of Canada Open Data Portal Metadata Catalogue

A metadata catalogue containing key information for datasets available on the Government of Canada's Open Data portal. It includes multiple flattened resources such as datasets metadata, resources metadata, and resource views metadata. The data was last updated in March 2026 by the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat.

Use Cases

• Analyze the distribution of dataset formats and resource types across the portal using the datasets metadata and resources metadata tables.
• Map relationships between datasets, their resources, and configured views using the resource views metadata and entity relation diagram.
• Profile the structure of CSV datasets loaded into the DataStore by examining the datastore fields metadata table.
• Track metadata completeness and field descriptions across the catalogue using the Data Package Fields table.

Strengths

• Provides a structured, machine-readable catalogue of a major national open data portal.
• Offers data in multiple formats including JSON Lines, SQLite, XLSX, and CSV for different user needs.
• Includes an entity relation diagram (ERD) to clarify table relationships and column formats.

Limitations

• The core dataset metadata is provided as heavily nested JSON, requiring advanced parsing skills.
• No row counts or dataset size metrics are provided in the input, limiting immediate assessment of scale.
• The catalogue describes other datasets but does not contain the actual open data records themselves.

Provenance

Source

Government of Canada's Open Data portal.

Collection Method

Generated using the ckanapi tool for Resource 1 and the Flatterer utility for Resources 2-8.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated March 2026.

Geography

Canada