A Government of Canada press release for April 4 states:
Experts and other users of digital topographic data will no longer have to pay to use digital versions of government maps and data. The Honourable Gary Lunn, Minister of Natural Resources, today announced that as of April 1, 2007, Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) began making its electronic topographic mapping data available to all users free of charge over the Internet.
This is great news. I am hoping that something similar can be announced by the Minister for Democratic Reform about the Postal codes by federal ridings file (Search this BLOG for PCFRF) that is needed to allow sites like this one to allow citizens to look up their elected Member of Parliament based on their postal code. We have a letter we are asking people to send to their MP, and this is an issue often talked about in the Citizens for Open Access to Civic Information and Data mailing list. (See Wiki page for "Postal Codes")
Great news!
Back in 2003 I discovered that the reason for a lack of good quality digital topo maps was that the gov't charged per 'item', where each item could be a single lake or contour line. Few companies wanted to make the investment.