Government of Canada CKAN API

Use in your agent

Load Open Canada catalogue metadata into pandas and Parquet. Checked against the provider's documentation on Nov 2, 2026.

Access

• No account or key. The Open Government CKAN Action API accepts GET requests with query parameters.

Request

curl 'https://open.canada.ca/data/en/api/3/action/package_search?rows=5&sort=metadata_modified%20desc'

Format

JSON with a result object containing a total count and dataset records with identifiers, bilingual metadata, organizations, licences, resource links and update timestamps.

Load into pandas and Parquet

Needs Python 3 with requests, pandas and pyarrow.

"""Government of Canada CKAN metadata search -> pandas -> Parquet."""
import requests
import pandas as pd

URL = "https://open.canada.ca/data/en/api/3/action/package_search"
r = requests.get(URL, params={"rows": 5, "sort": "metadata_modified desc"}, timeout=60)
r.raise_for_status()
rows = r.json()["result"]["results"]
df = pd.DataFrame([{
    "id": x["id"],
    "title": x["title"],
    "organization": (x.get("organization") or {}).get("title"),
    "metadata_modified": x.get("metadata_modified"),
    "num_resources": x.get("num_resources"),
    "license_title": x.get("license_title"),
} for x in rows])
df["metadata_modified"] = pd.to_datetime(df["metadata_modified"], utc=True)
df.to_parquet("open_canada_ckan_metadata.parquet", index=False)
print(len(df), "datasets; latest metadata update", df["metadata_modified"].max().isoformat())

Run by us on 2026-11-02 (python 3.13.5 | pandas 3.1.0 | pyarrow 26.0.0 | requests 2.34.2). Result: 5 datasets; latest metadata update 2026-11-02T21:01:41.114988+00:00

Limits

• Rate limit: Not stated.
• The Open Canada CKAN API supports GET requests only.
• Dataset coverage and linked-resource access conditions vary by publisher.

Quirks

• Many metadata fields are bilingual objects or arrays rather than scalar text.
• Resource URLs can be relative paths; resolve them against https://open.canada.ca before downloading.
• metadata_modified describes the catalogue record and may differ from a linked file's last-modified time.

Terms and attribution

• The Open Government Licence – Canada allows lawful commercial and non-commercial reuse subject to its conditions and exemptions.
• Acknowledge the information provider or use the licence's supplied attribution statement when no specific statement is given.
• Inspect the licence fields and source page for each linked dataset because catalogue resources can carry separate conditions.

Sources

• https://open.canada.ca/en/access-our-application-programming-interface-api: “The CKAN API on open.canada.ca only supports GET requests.”
• https://open.canada.ca/en/access-our-application-programming-interface-api: “Each dataset has a “Link to JSON format” button that uses the API to download the complete metadata record for that dataset, delivering it to the end user in JSON format (JavaScript Object Notation).”
• https://open.canada.ca/en/open-government-licence-canada: “The Information Provider grants you a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive licence to use the Information, including for commercial purposes, subject to the terms below.”
• https://open.canada.ca/en/open-government-licence-canada: “Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada.”