Toronto Open Data: CKAN portal under a bespoke municipal licence
Toronto opened one of Canada's first municipal data portals in November 2009 and rebuilt it on CKAN in 2018; the catalogue held 554 datasets in July 2026, with records edited the same day. Council adopted an Open Data Master Plan for 2018-2022 — a strategy document that created no publishing duty and no reporting cadence — and has run annual roadmaps since it lapsed. Data is offered under the Open Government Licence – Toronto, a bespoke deed adapted from Ontario's OGL 1.0 that permits commercial reuse in perpetuity if reusers print 'Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Toronto.'
115 of 554 datasets carry the Open Government Licence – Toronto in their CKAN metadata; 284 are tagged 'License not specified' and the rest carry no licence field (city CKAN API, 26 July 2026)
🎓 Lesson
A bespoke municipal deed only reaches as far as the metadata that names it. Toronto's licence is unusually clear about attribution, exclusions and termination, yet four in five catalogue records do not cite it, so a careful reuser cannot tell from the record alone what they are allowed to do.
Evidence🏛️ Official
Scale🏙️ City-wide
Sources
↗ City of Toronto — Open Data Licence (Open Government Licence – Toronto)The deed itself. Grants a 'worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive licence to use' the information, including commercially, to 'copy, modify, publish, translate, adapt, distribute or otherwise use the Information in any medium, mode or format for any lawful purpose.' Requires the statement 'Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Toronto.' where the provider gives no specific wording. Not revocable at will: 'the rights granted to you under this licence … will end automatically' only on breach, with no cure or reinstatement clause. States it 'is based on version 1.0 of the Open Government Licence – Ontario'.
↗ City of Toronto — Open Data Licence (toronto.ca text, exclusions)Same deed on the corporate site. Sets out the exemptions: personal information, information unavailable under Ontario's freedom of information acts, third-party rights, official symbols, and patented or trademarked material. Adds a no-endorsement clause — the licence 'does not grant you any right to use the Information in a way that suggests any official status or that the Information Provider endorses you' — an as-is disclaimer, and Ontario governing law.
↗ City of Toronto CKAN API — package_searchQueried through the CKAN API directly rather than the website, on 26 July 2026. Returns count 554. The license_id facet returns open-government-licence-toronto 115 and notspecified 284; the balance carries no licence value. The 115 figure was confirmed independently with q=license_id:'open-government-licence-toronto'&rows=0. Currency check: the first package returned, Members of Toronto City Council – Voting Record, shows metadata_modified 2026-07-26T18:09:54.
↗ Toronto City Council — item 2018.EX30.12, Toronto's Open Data Master PlanExecutive Committee 24 January 2018; City Council adopted 31 January and 1 March 2018, 35-0. Council 'approved the Open Data Master Plan set out in Attachment 1' to the 10 January 2018 report of the Deputy City Manager and Chief Information Officer. The only report-back attached was a one-off review, due 19 June 2018, of the steps needed to 'ensure the publishing of Open Data will protect the City's commercially confidential and proprietary interests' — there is no recurring compliance or inventory report.
↗ City of Toronto — Open Data Master PlanConfirms the plan covers 2018-2022 and is framed as a strategic vision co-developed with the public. The page states no open-data-by-default obligation, no data inventory requirement and no Council reporting cycle, and carries no completion status.
↗ City of Toronto Open Data — 2026 RoadmapPublished 4 February 2026. Nine initiatives for Q1-Q4 2026, including an Open Data Dashboard, third-party dataset guidelines, an incubator and a data quality scoring upgrade. Explicitly organised around the 2018 Master Plan's four themes and notes most deliverables are checked off but with 'lots of room for improvement' — the plan was not renewed after 2022 but was not abandoned either.
↗ City of Toronto Open Data — About and programme historyDates the first portal to fall 2009 and the current in-house rebuilt portal to 2018; the programme timeline records a 'CKAN 2.9 Upgrade' in 2022, confirming the platform. Notes an 'Open Data License Refreshed' milestone in 2010.
📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Toronto Open Data: CKAN portal under a bespoke municipal licence” — Toronto, Canada. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/toronto-open-data/ (last verified 2026-07-26). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.
