Northern Economist 2.0

Sunday 7 July 2019

Historical Canadian Government Data Sources

I recently received the following message from Ryan MacDonald at Statistics Canada:

I recently came upon a number [of] scans done by our library to place the historical publications into pdfs.  They can sometimes be a little difficult to search for, so I thought I would pass along a few links that may be of use to you or your colleagues in your research.”

So, I think a good way to further disseminate these historical economic data sources more broadly is to post the links here on Northern Economist. Please feel free to share.

Canada Year Book
<<http://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.838186/publication.html>>

Tables of the trade and navigation of the Province of Canada for the year ... (1850-1908)
<<http://www.publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.843286/publication.html>>

Report of the Department of Customs containing the tables of imports, exports and navigation of the Dominion of Canada for the fiscal year ended Mar. 31 ... (1909-1916, 1918)
<<http://www.publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.843294/publication.html>>

Annual report of the trade of Canada (imports for consumption and exports) (1917, 1919)
<<http://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.852124/publication.html>>

Trade of Canada = Commerce du Canada (1920-1939)
<<http://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.851960/publication.html>>

Trade of Canada = Commerce du Canada (1939-1970)
<<http://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.809303/publication.html>>

Imports, merchandise trade / Statistics Canada, External Trade Division = Importations, commerce de marchandises / Statistique Canada, Division du commerce extérieur (1970-2002)
<<http://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.809322/publication.html>>

In addition, if you are interested in a lot of official Government of Canada as well as provincial government publications, quite a few appear to have migrated onto a platform known as Internet Archive.  For example, you can find Canadian Federal Government public accounts going back into the nineteenth century. That has come in handy for me given that my university library a couple of years back "deselected" all the paper copies of the federal public accounts. Given the growing trend away from paper, sources like the Internet Archive and the Statistics Canada links provided above will become increasingly dominant.