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Its Free now

Until a few days ago most of Canada's statistical output was "pay per view"  it made some sense that those who wanted the data should have to pay for the stuff.  On the other hand the amount payed was  fraction of the total cost of obtaining the data (like less the 2%), so Canadian paid to collect data (that they didn't get) and some guys paid a notional amount to get the information.  I'm sure that the initial idea was good, but Canada is so small and there are so few players (7 main banks, 6 large insurance companies), even if each paid a $100,000 a year  (they don't) it still would not come close to me meeting StatsCan's bill.  Enough with the insanity (my guess that the team that collected all these monies cost more than the government raised from selling the data).  So that means that the hoypoloi (BTW I though that was Yiddish, its actually Latin for "the many") gets the same data that the big boys get.

So today's data:

Shipping (by sea) rose 9.8% in 2010 to 450 million tones -- great I guess but 2009 was a recession.  Canadians have a travel deficit with the rest of the world (shock and horror -- Canadians get sun in the winter and visit the world in the summer, foreigners love to come to Canada (not so much) to see how "Indians living in tents and Canadian trappers" also apparently bitch about our Tar Sands). My favorite stats:  growth in the asphalt roof (September)  -- seriously they measure everything at StatsCan!


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