There are two things I want to let people know about: the existence of a free Ontario Postal Codes by Electoral Districts (ED) file, and about a new Electoral Data Consortium to help NGO's simplify actions that need access to electoral data.
Ontario Postal Codes by Electoral Districts
I was pointed to a page on the Elections Ontario website that has a Postal Codes by Electoral Districts (ED) file for the province of Ontario. It is similar in many ways to the expensive Postal codes by federal ridings file (PCFRF) which Statistics Canada currently charges $2,900.00 for the first file, and an additional $500 per update that is available twice yearly.
While I was under the impression that the province of Ontario used the same electoral boundaries as the Canadian government, this is not the case as there are 106 federal ridings in Ontario and 107 provincial ridings. The federal districts use a 5 digit number, the first two digits for the province and the last 3 digits a number within the province.
Up to Thornhill the numbers seem to match, and then things shift.
Thornhill is 35089 federally and 89 provincially
35090 is Thunder Bay--Rainy River federally, but "Thunder Bay -- Atikokan" is 90 provincially
35091 is "Thunder Bay--Superior North" federally, and 91 provincially
35092 is "Timmins--James Bay" federally, but "Timiskaming--Cochrane" provincially. "Timmins--James Bay" is 93 provincially
35093 is "Toronto Centre" federally, but 94 provincially
Electoral Data Consortium
There has been a need for NGO's to come together to collaborate on electoral data. For some data there is a need to create and maintain the data by reading it from other sources (Contact information for elected representatives and candidates during elections), and for other data the source is very expensive (PCFRF data sold by Statistics Canada). There is also a need to bring all the publicly available data together in a way that makes it easier for NGO's to access the data without having to have their own staff following what is available and when it is updated.
A group of consultants who have a number of NGO clients with similar needs brainstormed the idea of having a consortium of our NGO clients to get this data. This would allow us to collaborate on the maintenance of this data, as well as allowing a single entity to purchase the PCFRF data and allow consortium members to query the data in a way that didn't require that they also purchase the data.
The project is being headed by Mike Gifford of OpenConcept Consulting, with Phillip Smith of Community Bandwidth and myself of FLORA Community Consulting offering additional support. If you are part of an organization that wishes to get involved, let us know.