{"id":"StatisticsCanadaOpenLicenceAgreement","title":"Statistics Canada Open Licence Agreement","reviewed_on":"2026-09-15","reviewer":"Giray Havur","text_source":"https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/terms-conditions/open-licence","text_retrieved":true,"verdict":"corrected","summary":"The record was wrong in the way that matters most: it prohibited adapting and modifying the information, while the licence grants the right to produce, publish, distribute and sell Value-added Products, which it defines as products made by adapting or incorporating the information. The prohibitions were replaced by permissions with the attribution and adaptation-notice duties the licence requires. The two clause fields were missing and were added from the No Warranty and no Liability section, and the link was updated to the current Statistics Canada address.","findings":[{"rubric":1,"severity":"minor","field":"cc:legalcode","description":"cc:legalcode and dct:source pointed at https://www.statcan.gc.ca/eng/reference/licence, which still redirects but is no longer the published address. Both now point at https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/terms-conditions/open-licence, the page the redirect ends at and the one this review was read from.","action":"applied","change":"cc:legalcode <https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/terms-conditions/open-licence> ;\ndct:source <https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/terms-conditions/open-licence> ;"},{"rubric":1,"severity":"minor","field":"dct:alternative","description":"The record has no dct:alternative and no SPDX entry exists for this licence. Proposed.","action":"proposed","change":"dct:alternative \"StatCan Open Licence\",\n        \"Statistics Canada Open Licence\" ;"},{"rubric":2,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:target","description":"dalicc:CreativeWork plus dcmitype:Dataset, which matches the definition of Information: \"the compilation of non-confidential results from any Statistics Canada activities, including data files, databases, public use microdata files, publications, tables, graphs, maps, reports and text\".","action":"none"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"odrl:derive and odrl:modify were modelled as prohibitions, which contradicts the grant. The Licence Grant section reads: \"Statistics Canada grants you a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to: use, reproduce, publish, freely distribute, or sell the Information; use, reproduce, publish, freely distribute, or sell Value-added Products; and, sublicence any or all such rights, under terms consistent with this licence\", and Value-added Products are defined as \"any products you have produced by adapting or incorporating the Information, in whole or in part, in accordance with this licence\". The two prohibitions were removed and the corresponding permissions added, together with cc:DerivativeWorks and dalicc:ModifiedWorks, since publishing, distributing and selling Value-added Products is expressly granted.","action":"applied","change":"remove:\n    odrl:prohibition [ a odrl:Prohibition ; odrl:action odrl:derive ] ,\n        [ a odrl:Prohibition ; odrl:action odrl:modify ]\nadd:\n    odrl:permission [ a odrl:Permission ;\n            odrl:action odrl:modify ;\n            odrl:duty [ a odrl:Duty ;\n                    odrl:action cc:Attribution ],\n                [ a odrl:Duty ;\n                    odrl:action dalicc:modificationNotice ] ],\n        [ a odrl:Permission ;\n            odrl:action odrl:derive ;\n            odrl:duty [ a odrl:Duty ;\n                    odrl:action cc:Attribution ],\n                [ a odrl:Duty ;\n                    odrl:action dalicc:modificationNotice ] ],\n        [ a odrl:Permission ;\n            odrl:action cc:DerivativeWorks ],\n        [ a odrl:Permission ;\n            odrl:action dalicc:ModifiedWorks ] ;"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"Sublicensing is granted and the record does not say so: \"sublicence any or all such rights, under terms consistent with this licence\". That is the pattern the vocabulary models as a dalicc:ChangeLicense permission carrying a dalicc:compliantLicense duty, next to an odrl:grantUse permission. The record instead prohibits dalicc:ChangeLicense. Proposed rather than applied, because turning a prohibition into a permission on the strength of the phrase \"under terms consistent with this licence\" is a reading, not a transcription.","action":"proposed","change":"remove:\n    odrl:prohibition [ a odrl:Prohibition ;\n            odrl:action dalicc:ChangeLicense ]\nadd:\n    odrl:permission [ a odrl:Permission ;\n            odrl:action odrl:grantUse ],\n        [ a odrl:Permission ;\n            odrl:action dalicc:ChangeLicense ;\n            odrl:duty [ a odrl:Duty ;\n                    odrl:action dalicc:compliantLicense ] ] ;"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:permission","description":"cc:CommercialUse and dalicc:chargeDistributionFee are supported by the right to sell the Information and the Value-added Products. reproduce, distribute, display and present follow from use, reproduce, publish and freely distribute.","action":"none"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"dalicc:promote is supported by the Advertising and Publicity section, which forbids using the name, crest, logos, insignia or domain names of Statistics Canada or the official symbols of the Government of Canada without written authorisation, and by the obligation \"not use the Information in a way that suggests that Statistics Canada endorses you or your use of the Information\".","action":"none"},{"rubric":5,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:duty","description":"cc:Attribution hangs on odrl:distribute and now also on modify and derive, which matches the Acknowledgment of Source section: the notice \"Source: Statistics Canada, name of product, reference date. Reproduced and distributed on an 'as is' basis with the permission of Statistics Canada\" for the information, and \"Adapted from Statistics Canada, name of product, reference date. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product\" for a Value-added Product. The second sentence is why dalicc:modificationNotice was attached to the two new permissions.","action":"none"},{"rubric":6,"severity":"major","field":"dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer","description":"The record carried no clause text at all, although the licence has a section headed No Warranty and no Liability with one paragraph of each. Both were added, quoted verbatim.","action":"applied","change":"dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer \"\"\"The Information is licensed 'as is', and Statistics Canada makes no representations or warranties whatsoever ...\"\"\" ;\ndalicc:LiabilityLimitation \"\"\"Statistics Canada or any of its Ministers, officials, servants, employees, agents, successors and assigns shall not be liable ...\"\"\" ;"},{"rubric":7,"severity":"info","field":"cc:jurisdiction","description":"dalicc:worldwide matches the grant. dalicc:perpetual is a fair reading of a licence that is \"effective as of the date and time you access the Information\" and ends only on breach, with the survival clause keeping the Acknowledgment of Source and the No warranty sections alive afterwards. The governing law is Ontario and the applicable laws of Canada, for which the model has no field.","action":"none"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"record","description":"This licence carries conditions that no open licence vocabulary covers: the data-protection obligations not to merge or link the Information with other databases in order to identify a person, business or organisation, and not to present it so as to suggest access to confidential Statistics Canada holdings; the duty to reproduce the Information accurately and not misrepresent it or its source; the ban on disassembling, decompiling or reverse engineering any software supplied with the Information; and the duty to keep distributing Value-added Products only to complete orders placed before termination. Proposed terms: dalicc:noReidentification, dalicc:reproduceAccurately, dalicc:noMisrepresentation, dalicc:noReverseEngineering, dalicc:terminationOnBreach.","action":"none"},{"rubric":9,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"The consistency check reports no conflict, before and after the corrections. Turning the derive and modify prohibitions into permissions removed a latent contradiction with the sale of Value-added Products rather than creating one.","action":"none"},{"rubric":10,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"The record is not an edition of the Canadian Open Government Licence: it is an older, longer and more restrictive agreement with its own structure, and it should not be modelled like the other two Canadian records. What it shares with them after the review is the attribution duty and the non-endorsement prohibition. It is the only record of the review group that grants sublicensing expressly.","action":"none"}],"family":"Government licenses (United Kingdom, Canada)","port_of":null,"variant_kind":null,"notes":"The page fetched is the current one, dated 2025-07-10, which speaks of His Majesty the King while the record's cc:attributionName still says Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada. The substance of the licence is unchanged. Nothing in this review is legal advice."}