Glossary

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The identifier this site assigns to an organisation. It is minted once and never reassigned, so it keeps meaning the same organisation after a name change, an amalgamation, or a move between provinces.

It is not a government number and no registrar will recognise it. It exists because the government numbers disagree with each other. How it is constructed.

Business numberBN — 123456789

The nine-digit number the Canada Revenue Agency issues to a business or charity. It is the best join key in Canadian open data: the federal corporate registry, the charities list, contracts and grants all carry it, which is what lets a company’s incorporation and its charitable status be recognised as one organisation. A fifteen-character form like 123456789RR0001 adds a program account — RR for charities.

Corroboration

How many independent publishers assert an organisation — not how many files it appears in. Two datasets from the Canada Revenue Agency are one publisher, and counting them as two would let a record earn a full street address it has not earned. Corroboration is what decides address precision.

Forward sortation areaFSA — the first three characters of a postal code

Federal contract publication truncates a supplier’s postal code to three characters — K1A rather than K1A 0A6 — on the rows that carry one at all. It is why an award attaches to an organisation by name and postal area, or by a name unique across the country, and otherwise is left unattached rather than guessed at.

Anchor

A key a publisher guarantees is stable for one thing — a corporation number, a charity registration, a licence number. Resolution happens between anchors, not between names, which is what stops two companies with the same name becoming one record.

Near-match

Two records that look like the same organisation on the evidence available, but not on evidence strong enough to merge them — most often a shared distinctive name with no address agreeing. They are recorded rather than acted on, because identifiers are permanent: a wrong merge is forever, a missed one is not.

Standing offerand supply arrangement

Permission to sell to a government department at agreed terms. It is a qualification, not a payment: holding one means an organisation may be bought from, not that anything was ever bought.

This matters for reading contract figures. The federal contract value field includes standing-offer ceilings, which is why one row in the file carries just over $20 billion against a single procurement.

Contract value

Value as published, not money paid. It includes ceilings a department may never draw on, and it excludes anything below the $10,000 publication threshold. Totals here are also a floor in the other direction, because awards that could belong to more than one company are left unattached.

Grant or contribution

A transfer payment — money given rather than money spent buying something. It is never added to contract value under one label on this site, because they are different instruments: a department that mostly grants is doing a different job from one that mostly buys.

Qualified donee

An organisation a registered charity may legally give money to — another registered charity, a municipality, a university on the prescribed list. A charity’s gifts to qualified donees is money passed onward rather than spent on its own programs, which is why a grant-making foundation can show a low share of spending on charitable activities and be doing exactly its job.

T3010the Registered Charity Information Return

The annual return every registered charity files with the Canada Revenue Agency. It is the only public financial statement any Canadian organisation is required to file — private companies file none — so it is the deepest financial picture on this site, and it exists for one sector only.

Figures on a charity’s page carry the CRA line number they came from: 4700 total revenue, 4950 total expenditures, 5000 the part that reached charitable programs, 5010 management and administration, 5020 fundraising, 4200 total assets, 4350 total liabilities.

Address precision

Whether a street address is shown or coarsened to a locality. A registered office is very often somebody’s home, so a street address appears only where two independent publishers agree on it. Everything else is shown at the city. The full rule.

Withheld

A subject that could not be confirmed to be an organisation rather than a person, and is therefore not published at all. Municipal licence files are full of sole proprietors trading under their own names; somebody who takes out a trade licence should not acquire a permanent public profile because of it.

Attached

Said of a payment, a qualification, a board member or a filing that has been matched to an organisation. Things that are attached never create an organisation: only a registrar, a regulator or a licensor does that. An award that matches nothing is kept unattached rather than turned into a record of its own.

Open Government LicenceOGL

The licence most Canadian governments publish open data under. It permits reuse, redistribution and commercial use with attribution. Every source on this site is under one — a bar that excludes two provincial registers, and the reasons are recorded rather than left as gaps.

NEQNuméro d’entreprise du Québec — 1169283323

The ten-digit number the Registraire des entreprises assigns to every business in Québec. It is that province’s equivalent of a corporation number, and it is the identifier that would let Québec companies be joined to everything else here.

The register that issues it is published under a licence this site will not accept, so the numbers do not come from there. They come from the City of Montréal, which records the NEQ of each of its 15,881 suppliers and publishes that list under a plain attribution licence. It is a smaller set, lawfully obtained, rather than a larger one taken on terms that were refused.

Employees reported

A headcount an organisation stated about itself when filing with a public body — not a figure anyone has verified, and not a figure any registry holds. No Canadian corporate register records company size at all.

It is a snapshot from one filing on one date. A company that reported 400 in 2019 and 120 later has shrunk, and this site shows the most recent number rather than the largest one.

Findinga decided matter, not an accusation

A conclusion a regulator reached about an organisation it regulates, after a process that ended: a court ruled, on a date, and recorded a penalty.

Nothing softer than that appears on this site. An inspection score, an unresolved charge, a complaint, a review, or anything written by a member of the public is not a finding, and none of them are carried here. The difference between was convicted and was accused is the whole difference between a record and a smear.

Findings are attached by the regulator’s own identifier for the business, never by matching one name against another, and a source that publishes findings is not permitted to create an organisation — so every record showing one was established by a registrar or a licensor first.

Does not exista source state, alongside live and refused

Said of a dataset this project went looking for and found is not published — Ottawa has no open business licence file, and neither does Montréal. It is listed rather than left as a silent gap, because a missing city looks identical whether nobody has reached it yet or there is nothing to reach, and only one of those is worth someone’s afternoon. Each entry records where the search was run and when, so it can be checked and so it expires.

How records are assembled · The identifier · What is deliberately not published