Author: Yvonne Chan

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Online Resource (Free)

Free data from FAO

Unlimited free data on hunger, food and agriculture is now available from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) through its central data repository FAO-STAT.  It was previously possible to get some data for free from FAO-STAT, but larger datasets were only available through a subscription.

From the FAO Media Centre:  FAO-STAT “contains over one million data points covering 210 countries and territories” and “is an important tool in the fight to alleviate poverty, promote sustainable development and eliminate hunger….FAOSTAT includes data on agricultural and food production, usage of fertilizers and pesticides, food aid shipments, food balance sheets, forestry and fisheries production, irrigation and water use, land use, population trends, trade in agricultural products, the use of agricultural machinery, and more.

FAOSTAT can be consulted using English, French or Spanish and allows users to select and organize the statistical information into tables and charts according to their needs and to download it in Excel format. The original statistic data is supplied by individual countries and regional development organizations in standardized formats. Records go back to 1961.”

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Online Resource (Free)

New UN Organization for Women

The United Nations is amalgamating four of its organizations for women into a single entity called UN Women.

“UN Women merges and will build on the important work of four previously distinct parts of the UN system which focus exclusively on gender equality and women’s empowerment:

UN Women — which will be operational by January 2011 — has been created by the General Assembly to…be a dynamic and strong champion for women and girls, providing them with a powerful voice at the global, regional and local levels. It will enhance, not replace, efforts by other parts of the UN system (such as UNICEF, UNDP, and UNFPA) that continue to have responsibility to work for gender equality and women’s empowerment in their areas of expertise.”

The UN Women website is currently up and has some limited content, i.e., press releases,  facts & figures, and “key documents,” but it is not clear whether the research and publications of the merged entities will migrate to the new site in due course.  In the meantime, the sites for the merged organizations remain operational and at present all their publications are accessible.

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Online Resource (Free)

Perspectives on the upcoming G20 meeting in Toronto

As you are no doubt aware, Toronto is playing host to the upcoming G20 summit June 26th and 27th.  It’s a good time, therefore, to take a look at some information sites and other resources related to the group.  Here are just a few – there are many many more out there.

  • The Government of Canada has a website devoted to the G20 and its meeting in Toronto.  On this site you can find government news, videos, Ministers’ statements, and a calendar of events.
  • The University of Toronto, through its Munk School of Global Affairs, has a G20 Information Centre with extensive links to news features; Ministers’ statements and communiques; G20 Official Documents, factsheets and newsdesk publications; and links to both U of T and external research reports.
  • OECD and the G20 is a topic page on the OECD website which provides information and links to relevant OECD reports, video clips, working papers and OECD leaders’ statements.
  • The World Bank has a blog devoted to the G20.  The posts are substantive and include World Bank or other high quality data sources where relevant.  Recent post topics include:  auto sales, poverty, protectionism, and good governance.
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Online Resource (Free)

Historical Debates now available online

Great news from the Parliament of Canada today. The staff there have just launched a new website:

“dedicated to the reconstituted debates of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada.
In the early years of the new Dominion, the only account of parliamentary
debates was to be found in newspaper reports. These were saved in
scrapbooks by librarians of Parliament. As a centennial project, the
Parliament of Canada and the Library embarked on a project to reconstitute
these debates from the scrapbook accounts. As well, Senate debates
originally only available in English are being translated and published.

On this website
http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Sites/LOP/ReconstitutedDebates/index-e.asp you will
find the Senate Debates 1867-1872 in both English and French and the House
of Commons Debates also 1867-1872 in both languages. Additional years will
be included as work on them is completed.”

The debates have been scanned from the originals so you get to see all the original typeface and formatting.

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Subscription Database

Canadian Statistics: How to find them

Ever needed trustworthy statistics to back up your research?  Not surprisingly, Statistics Canada is your “go-to” source for Canadian stats, but you may not be sure where to find what you need.  The major issue for most people is deciding which of the two main databases that UBC Library subscribes to will have the information that is needed.

First, let’s look at the Census of Canada.   It aims to count the nation’s population and collects  some basic information about the inhabitants of each dwelling, such as their relationships to one another, mother tongue, marital status, gender and age. One in five households get a longer form which covers additional topics including income & earnings; immigration status; ethnic origins; and educational attainment.

Key things to know about Census data:

  • The sample is large – either 100% or 20% – so the accuracy of your data is high.
  • The data in the Census is based solely on the questions asked – if the data you need cannot be sourced from the questions on the Census, then this is not the right place to look.
  • The questions on the Census can change over time or be eliminated.  Consult the Census Dictionary for the relevant Census year to see how long the questions have been asked and whether they have changed over time.
  • Click here to see the questions asked on the 2006 Census.
  • Click here to access topic-based data from the 2006 Census

The other major database from Statistics Canada that we subscribe to is called CANSIM – the Canadian Socioeconomic Information Management Database.  It disseminates the statistics gathered by StatsCan which come from all the other surveys conducted by the agency.  You can find some links to some Census data within Cansim, but as a general rule this is where you want to go for topics not covered on the Census.

Key things to know about Cansim:

  • typically, the sample is smaller than what you’ll get from the Census
  • Cansim is available from two different providers: StatsCan itself, via its user-friendly E-Stat database or through the University of Toronto via CHASS.  E-Stat is updated once a year in July, while CHASS is updated weekly.
  • CANSIM topics include Economic Accounts, Crime & Justice, Labour, Manufacturing, Construction, Trade, Agriculture, Finance, Demographics, Health, Transportation, and Education & Training. Selected data on population estimates and vital statistics are also available.
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News Print Resource

Changes to BC Local Elections

BC Municipal election rules  may be about to change – particularly in regards to candidates’ expenses, campaign contributions and election advertising.    The Local Government Elections Task Force has just wrapped up and submitted its report to the BC Government.

“The six-member Task Force was co-chaired by Bill Bennett, Minister of Community and Rural Development, and Harry Nyce, president of the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM). It included two other UBCM executive members (with a third acting as alternate) and two provincial MLAs

The Task Force reviewed specific issues related to local government elections. Topics reviewed were:

  • Campaign finance, including contribution/spending disclosure and limits, and tax credits
  • Enforcement processes and outcomes
  • Role of the chief electoral officer (B.C.) in local government elections
  • Election cycle (term of office)
  • Corporate vote
  • Other agreed upon matters, (e.g. matters raised in UBCM resolutions such as eligibility of local government volunteers to be candidates)”

You can read the report here: http://www.localelectionstaskforce.gov.bc.ca/taskforce_report.html

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Online Resource (Free)

Social Media; Anti-Spam Laws; Federal Debt: New from PIRS

MPs and Senators study, debate and vote on a variety of issues and most of them wind up impacting most of us.  Ever wondered how they do their research?  As outlined in our entry of March 22, the Parliamentary Information and Research Service (PIRS)  has researchers on staff who “obtain and analyze material, and write…research papers at the request of Senators and Members of the House of Commons.”

Those research papers are freely available from the Library of Parliament webpage and provide you with a well-researched, cited, and readable summary of issues being studied in Parliament.  Why not take advantage of this tax-payer funded service when conducting your own research?

Here are some of the latest reports:

Researching older issues?  PIRS has reports on-site from as far back as 1991, though the majority are from 2006 – 2009.  For example:

The array of topics covered by PIRS is impressive, so if you’re looking for some primary source documents or if you are looking for something from the government’s perspective you may be well-served by the documents you find on their site!

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Online Resource (Free)

More Open Data projects for Canadians

Two great new sites have just launched this month that will help Canadians have easier access to Federal government data.

openparliament.ca was launched on April 12th, by Michael Mulley, a Montreal-based web designer.  It provides a simple and attractive interface from which to find data culled from the Hansard (aka, official Debates) of the House of Commons.  You can browse by MP or search by name or postal code.  The main focus of the site is to keep citizens informed about the work of parliamentarians and its most useful feature to that end is its hyperlinked list of topics under current debate.  Are you curious to know what MPs were debating about most recently? According to Mulley, who has taken his information from the April 16th Hansard, topics included:

  • ethics
  • Afghanistan
  • Fairness at the Pump
  • sealing industry
  • Canada Post
  • agriculture
  • Chile
  • the environment
  • wine industry
  • and much more!

If datasets are your thing, check out http://www.datadotgc.ca/ Launched by David Eaves on April 14th, this site provides a home to a growing list of federal government datasets.  You can see which ministries share their data and which do not and you can see how many datasets each ministry has provided.  At present the lion’s share of available data come from Natural Resources Canada, but as the open data movement grows in Canada we will likely see more content added from other departments.   Supports keyword searching and you can browse by ministry or by tags.

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Online Resource (Free)

C-SPAN Video Library

Interested in hearing Maher Arar’s testimony to the US House Committees on Torture?  Or watching Toyota executives testify before Senate?  Or perhaps you’d like to watch bank executives being grilled over the recent financial crisis?  Well you can watch all this and more on the C-Span Video Library website.

“Every C-SPAN program aired since 1987, now totaling over 160,000 hours, is contained in the C-SPAN Archives and immediately accessible through the database….”

Videos of Congressional sessions and committee hearings are posted alongside full-text transcripts of the events and a list of all participants.   Other types of content include press briefings/news conferences,  media interviews, clips of debates, ceremonies, public appearances, and even clips from foreign legislatures.  You can search for videos by “subject, speaker names, titles, affiliations, sponsors, committees, categories, formats, policy groups, keywords, and location.”

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Online Resource (Free)

Canadian Tobacco Industry Documents

The site for the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, hosted by the University of California San Francisco, has just added over 3700 documents from the  Canadian Tobacco Trials:  “The Canadian Tobacco Trials collection consists of court records (transcripts, depositions, exhibits) from two major national Canadian trials – the 1989 Tobacco Products Control Act (TPCA) Trial and the 1997 Tobacco Act Trial.”

  • Click here to read about the collection
  • Click here to start searching the collection

Here’s  more information about the Legacy Documents Library:

“The Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (LTDL) contains more than 11 million documents (60+ million pages) created by major tobacco companies related to their advertising, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and scientific research activities….(and also) offers integrated searching of tobacco industry documents from a variety of companies…. These collections are comprised of tobacco industry documents from the late nineteenth century up through the present with the bulk of the collections dated 1950 through 2002”

Other collections besides the newly added Canadian Tobacco Trials include:

Huge thanks to the folks at the Resource Shelf for alerting us to this new content!

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