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  • Canadian Hydrographic Service 'gets tough' against the illegal copying of its digital and paper charts. See News Release on the website of its exclusive data distributor Nautical Data International in Newfoundland.

    According to this release, this is the first time in Canada that an individual has been convicted of Crown copyright infringement under the Copyright Act.

  • Chesapeake Analytics has a Canadian Geospatial Data Policy Study Web Survey on their website. This looks like it was used for the KPMG study above.
  • Researchers suffering death by 1,000 cuts, critics charge in article for Southam News, July 1999.
  • Geo World magazine published an article Canadian Geospatial Data Policy Stifles Productivity by Allan Levinsohn in their June 1999 issue.
  • Information Technology and Open Government is a report prepared for the Information Commissioner of Canada in 1994. It contains this text from Section 3. Administrative Practices:
    Despite the government's commitment to widespread dissemination of information, current administrative practices could lead to more restrained access to information in the future. First, government communications policy clearly directs government institutions to recover the full cost of producing information except in those cases where there is a clear duty to inform. This policy is likely to create economic barriers to access. Second, the guidelines on tradeable data and intellectual property could result in less information being subject to the Act because it is "published." If the information is published only by a third-party vendor in the private sector, the pricing of that information is not under the control of government and would escape the normal political process of holding government accountable for pricing policies. Finally, the recognition of the value of information could lead to more information being exempt under s. 18 of the [Access to Information] Act.
  • REPORT ON SPATIAL DATA IN THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR NATURAL RESOURCES CANADA (1997) by David Goodenough, Dan McKenney, and Bruce Pendrel of the Pacific Forestry Centre of Natural Resources Canada
  • The Government of Canada Treasury Board Manual - Access to Information volume seems to set official policy for data distribution.

    Section 2-08 Specific Exemptions contains policy on section 18 of the Access to Information act. For lawyers and bureaucrats only !