Ottawa – The Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) is pleased to welcome today’s launch by Statistics Canada (StatCan) of the Centre for Municipal and Local Data (CMLD) portal, an important product of the sustained collaboration between the two organizations since October of 2020.
Municipalities play a crucial role in Canadians’ everyday lives, providing many of the critical services people need to live, work and play in diverse communities across the country - from large, urbanized cities to smaller, rural or agricultural centres. Collecting, publishing and improving the consistency and the comparability of municipal data is therefore key to ensuring data about local economic conditions, and socioeconomic and health impacts that can help continue responding to local needs.
Through its data integration and visualisation tool, its data catalogue for accessing statistics and indicators, its municipal mapping function and its municipal finance and socioeconomic dashboard, the CMLD portal will provide much-needed data about Canada's economy, society, and environment at a local level.
It is an additional, positive step towards strengthening FCM’s valued partnership with StatCan to improve local governments’ awareness and use of StatCan data, and to strengthen data literacy.
Quotes:
“A large share of public decisions that shape the fundamental character of our way of life are made at the municipal level. Statistics Canada is proud of its continued partnership with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and remains committed to improving access to municipal-level data, including disaggregated data, and establishing greater data-sharing and collaboration that foster data-driven decision making to meet the needs of Canadians in their communities.”
— Anil Arora, Chief Statistician of Canada
“As the level of government closest to the everyday lives of Canadians, municipalities depend on reliable data to make important policy decisions that are impactful, equitable, inclusive, and will improve Canadians’ quality of life in tangible ways. FCM congratulates StatCan on its new portal and looks forward to continuing to work together to advance the data-related needs of municipalities.”
— Carole Saab, Chief Executive Officer, Federation of Canadian Municipalities
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The Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) unites more than 2,100 local governments at the national level, representing more than 92 per cent of Canadians in every province and territory.
For more information: FCM Media Relations, (613) 907-6395, media@fcm.ca