What important public-policy or business questions in Canada can only be answered by combining two or more open datasets — for example procurement plus corporate registries, grants plus lobbying records, or health data plus demographics? Give concrete examples naming the datasets involved.
Twelve concrete, sourced Canadian examples, each backed by its own independent source — 12 distinct hosts spanning government pages, academic research, policy research and public-data investigations. This is a curated portfolio of important examples, not an exhaustive universe. In every case one dataset records an action or outcome, the other supplies identity, population, exposure or context — the value comes from the join.
Each row is one question: dataset 1 → join method → dataset 2, grouped by decision domain. Colour is the join pattern readers can reuse. Hover or tap a row for the decision it enables and its limitations; dashed-outline dataset boxes are searchable public registries rather than downloadable open files.
Match records on names, addresses, phone numbers or shared contacts when no public key exists — child-care licences to business registries, fourteen corporate registries into one dataset, open business attributes onto Corporations Canada, IBD suppliers to CanadaBuys tenders.
Overlay points, buffers or coverage areas on dissemination areas, subdivisions or economic regions — NPRI emitters on census demographics, broadband coverage on populations and labour outcomes, transit schedules on income quintiles.
Join on a shared entity and the relevant date or tenure — contracts, grants and lobbying contacts matched to a minister's department during their time in office; disease counts matched by jurisdiction and period to validate a century of records.
| # | Question answered by the join | Dataset 1 | Dataset 2 & additional | Join | Domain | Source |
|---|
Curated portfolio of 12 Canadian data-linkage questions, one row per question, each backed by a distinct source URL on a distinct host (government, academic, policy and public-data sources); compiled 2026. Columns record the named core datasets, publishers where identified, linkage method, decision value and stated limitations; long question, method and limitation texts are shortened on the page and shown in full on hover in the map. Join-pattern and domain groupings were assigned editorially from the stated linkage methods.