All posts by David McKie

About David McKie

DESCRIPTION This course will teach students how to locate, obtain, and read public records with an investigative mindset. Students will learn to probe public records to uncover connections and patterns of information that might be invisible from reviewing one record in isolation. Students will learn how public records fit into a complete research strategy with the aim of telling, investigative, original and breaking stories, or simply adding context to ongoing stories.

Median Household Income

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The map is zoomed  in to the Ottawa Census tracts. The dark colours represent the areas of highest median income in 2015, the most recent year for which Statistics Canada made income data available.

The city of Ottawa municipal boundaries are layered on top of the census tracts to provide a better sense of where the areas of interest are located.

Clicking inside the census tract boundaries produces a pop-up box with the median household income for 2005 and 2015, along with the percent change.

There are a few blank census tracts, which Statistics Canada says do not contain any data.

If you want to see other locations, simply zoom out, and then zoom in to the urban centre such as Vancouver, Toronto or Halifax.

Source: Statistics Canada

Recent Immigrants – the 2016 Census

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At first blush, it looks like there’s nothing on the map. So, you’ll have to zoom in. Areas like Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, and Halifax have the census tracts that contain the growth rates in recent immigrants between 2011 and 2016. Census tracts are located in communities with more than 100,000 people, and each census tract is a geographic area where between 2500 and 8000 people live. So, they’re quite small, as are the number of recent immigrants. Zooming in will take you to the colour-coded census tracts. The pop-up boxes contain numbers for 2011, 2016 and the percent difference. The rates in some areas are growing, remaining stagnant or shrinking. To avoid confusion, we have removed tracts in which zero recent immigrants were in 2011. Statistics Canada explains that “any change from 0 cannot be really measured as a % increase.” Although the agency does go on to explain that it’s important to “keep in mind that observed 0s should not be interpreted as true 0s – values could be rounded down or populations may not have been selected in the sample.”

Yellow represents negative growth. Tracts with the darker hues are in the positive.

MySQL Tutorial Using city of Ottawa 311 Data

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This page contains a tutorial for uploading the city of Ottawa’s 311 complaints data from Jan. 1, 2017, to August 2017 into MySQL.
Below  the video tutorial,  you’ll also find the MySQL queries that can be downloaded, and then uploaded to a MySQL query tab, allowing you to follow along.

As well, you’ll also find the PowerPoint presentation that accompanies the tutorial, complete with the page references in The Data Journalist. and the MySQL dump file that we uploaded for our Sept. 27 session.

http://www.davidmckie.com/OttawaServiceCalls_2013-2017_Dump_20170926.zip

Trafficking in Persons in 2016

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The following visualization is from Statistics Canada’s 2016 Incident-based crime statistics, by detailed violations filtered for human trafficking.

Source: Statistics Canada’s Incident-based crime statistics, by detailed violations

Canadian Average Housing Prices July 2016-17

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Click within the provincial boundaries to see the average housing prices for 2017. The table below the map shows city comparisons for July 2016 and July 2017, as well as the per cent differences, which are sorted in descending order.

To return to the original view, click anywhere outside the North American map.


Source: The Canadian Real Estate Association

Halifax Census Single-Parent Families

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This map is from the Statistics Canada 2016 Census, which measures the growth of single-parent families the Halifax-area census tracts. The darker colours represent areas with the highest increase. The lighter areas, the lowest increase. Click on each census tract to see the result.

Source: Statistics Canada

Halifax Crime Mapped

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Points  on the map were downloaded from Halifax’s open data site on August 9, 2017. The different coloured points represent crimes that have occurred in Halifax Regional Municipality within a seven-day period. To see the individual crimes, click the dots for a pop-up box. Click the double-arrows at the top left to see the legend.

 

2016 Census Halifax

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Each census tract represents the percent change of lone-parent families in Halifax. The darker colours represent the areas with the highest percents. To see the census tract’s number, click inside the polygon to obtain a pop-up box.

Analysis: David McKie/ Source: Statistics Canada

GOVERNMENT OPEN-DATA WEBSITES

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Alberta
http://data.alberta.ca/

Alberta  Government Salary disclosures
https://www.alberta.ca/salary-disclosure-table.cfm

ACOA Project Information (Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency)
http://pub.acoa-apeca.gc.ca/atip/e/content/default.asp

BC
http://www.openinfo.gov.bc.ca/ibc/search/search.page#cateloguehttp://www.openinfo.gov.bc.ca/ibc/index.page?http://www.data.gov.bc.ca/

Civil Aviation Daily Occurrence Reporting System (CADORS): Main Menu
http://wwwapps.tc.gc.ca/saf-sec-sur/2/cadors-screaq/m.aspx?lang=eng

Charities Listings (Revenue Canada)
http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/chrts-gvng/lstngs/menu-eng.html

Edmonton
http://data.edmonton.ca/

Elections BC (Political Contributions System)
http://contributions.electionsbc.gov.bc.ca/pcs/SA1ASearch.aspx

Elections Canada – Political Financing
http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=fin&&document=index&lang=e

Halifax’s Open Data Catalogue
http://www.halifax.ca/opendata/

Incident-based crime statistics, by detailed violations
http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/a26?lang=eng&id=2520051

Merchandise imports, exports and trade balance, customs and balance of payments basis for all countries, by seasonal adjustment and principal trading partners
http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/a26?lang=eng&retrLang=eng&id=2280069&&pattern=&stByVal=1&p1=1&p2=31&tabMode=dataTable&csid=

National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI) datasets
http://www.ec.gc.ca/inrp-npri/Default.asp?lang=En&n=0EC58C98-1

Newfoundland and Labrador
http://open.gov.nl.ca/

Nova Scotia
https://data.novascotia.ca/

Ontario
http://www.ontario.ca/government/open-data-ontario
http://www.ontario.ca/government/open-government

Ontario’s Public Sector Salary Disclosure
http://www.ontario.ca/government/public-sector-salary-disclosure

Open Government Portal (Federal)
http://open.canada.ca/data/en/datase

Ottawa
http://data.ottawa.ca/en/?page=1

Québec Ouvert (les données ouvertes pour le Québec)
http://quebecouvert.org/

Record Suspension Program 2015-2016 Report to Parliament
https://www.canada.ca/en/parole-board/corporate/transparency/reporting-to-canadians/record-suspension-report-to-parliament-2015-2016.html

Statistics Canada Trade Data
http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/a26?lang=eng&retrLang=eng&id=2280069&&pattern=&stByVal=1&p1=1&p2=31&tabMode=dataTable&csid=

Toronto
http://www1.toronto.ca/wps/portal/contentonly?vgnextoid=1a66e03bb8d1e310VgnVCM10000071d60f89RCRD

Trade Data Online
http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/tdo-dcd.nsf/eng/Home

Vancouver
http://data.vancouver.ca/

Vehicle Recalls Database
http://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/1ec92326-47ef-4110-b7ca-959fab03f96d