Improve public information on Canadian corporations - Commitment 12

What is the public problem that the commitment will address?

Currently, business identity information is distributed across jurisdictions in Canada, which poses access challenges for citizens and businesses alike. The federal, provincial, and territorial governments have agreed to collaborate on enhancing processes to reduce the burden on corporate registration and reporting and to provide streamlined access to corporate information through an online search. Making information about Canadian companies and organizations more accessible, discoverable, and usable, can ultimately improve corporate accountability.

What is the commitment?

The Government of Canada will provide searchable information on Canadian businesses that is held in business registries at the federal, provincial, and territorial level.

How will the commitment contribute to solve the public problem?

The federal, provincial and territorial members of the Canadian Association of Corporate Law Administrators (CACLA) are collaborating on the development of an expandable and adaptable digital solution.

Relevance to OGP values

This commitment relates to the OGP value of transparency.

Deliverables in Action Plan

1. Launch a pilot project to provide citizens and business with online capacity to search existing federal and provincial (from Ontario, Québec, and Nova Scotia) business registries through a single search tool.
2. Develop a proof of concept and prototype of a digital solution for reducing burden in the areas of corporate search, registration, and reporting for Canadian businesses that is expandable to all registries across Canada in order to drive consistency in corporate data provided to the public by both federal and provincial governments.
3. Launch a pilot of the digital solution using real data in a test environment. The online corporate search component will be released for testing by users.

Expected result

Canadians will have access to real-time information on Canadian businesses registered at the federal, provincial, and territorial levels.

Description of results

1. The pilot project is completed and has provided lessons learned on broader digital solution.

2. As of September, 2016, all provinces and territories approved a proof of concept and agreed to model a prototype for a multi-jurisdictional access service. The proof of concept was developed from April to June 2016 in collaboration with British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia.

   From November 2016 to March 2017, a prototype was developed using sample datasets from eight registries (federal, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland).

3. No action taken on this deliverable to date.

Next steps to June 2018

1. N/A - completed
2. N/A - completed

3. From July 2017 to March 2018, the first iteration of the pilot will include corporate information from five registries: Canada (federal); British Columbia; Saskatchewan; Ontario; and Québec.

   From April 2018 to June 2018, the second iteration will include Alberta and Manitoba.

Completion level

1. Completed
2. Completed
3. Not started