Free Canadian GIS Data Sources - Complete List, will be Updated Periodically

The following list is a list I have compiled of Free Canadian GIS data. Before you rush out and buy expensive data, why not see if they have it here for free? The list has a lot of national data, but I apologize if it is a bit Ontario Centric. Since Ontario is where I do the majority of my work....

http://www.geobase.ca - Fairly updated, provides SPOT radarsat data for all of Canada. This is incomplete - should be completed by 2010. Also provides an up to date national road network, a hydro network for Canada. Landsat 7 10-30 m cell size satellite imagery for all of Canada.

http://www.geographynetwork.ca/ is a site published by ESRI Canada that provides free obm data for all of Ontario. You can find the free Ontario OBM data at : http://www.geographynetwork.ca/website/obm/viewer.htm specifically. All you need to do is sign up to get layers like forest, drainage, contours, roads and more. I should not that the data is often outdated and temporally sensitive features, like roads, may be quite out of date (circa 1998)

http://geogratis.cgdi.gc.ca/geogratis/en/index.html provides a whole gamut of Canadian geospatial data. There is simply too much to indicate here, you need to check it out for yourself. Some of the things I have used in the past are vegetation indices, population maps and more!

http://geodepot.statcan.ca/Diss2006/DataProducts/RNF2006_e.jsp - Statscan only provides road networks for free and I have yet to explore the data. However, I have heard they are fairly up-to-date and provide street names in the attributes. The data apparently is as recent as 2007, which beats the geographynetwork hands down

More is coming soon on this topic.

FREE DATA: Good Sources of Free Canadian GIS Data

Free data is always great (even if you can already bill it to you client). This is my first post of many that lists some good sources for free data all over the world. We will start with Canada.

With regards to Ontario, you can find a number of OBMs (Ontario Base Maps/Ontario Base Data) for free all over the net. The best source for general data, in my opinion, is:

http://www.geographynetwork.ca

You can select the layers you want, the extent of your study area, the projection and the datum you want the data in. Then you download ESRI shapefiles with exactly what you are looking for.
Some others:
Free Map data For the Guelph, Kitchener Waterloo Cambridge Area:
http://grims.grandriver.ca/imf/imf.jsp?site=grca_datadis&ddsid=25aa6
- download watershed information, and usual boundaries. As well as free ortho imagery! If you love it, and want the whole water shed quickly, you can pay them a small fee for the entire data set on a DVD.

For DEM information for all of Ontario, check out
www.geobase.ca for Ontario DEMs
They dont have the highest pixel resolution size (30 meters if i remember correctly). But they are good for a general or key map/site plan elevation.

More coming soon...

One caveat for any free data - make sure it is accurate and up to date! You dont want to get burned for digitizing a forest that is no longer there.