[Talk-ca] Postcodes in Canada

Thu Oct 3 09:09:10 UTC 2019

>For example  if K4A 1M7 exists in the map then it would be reasonable to
assume that K4A 1M6 - 1M1 should also exist so could be looked for.

Not necessarily. The first three characters are province, region
indicators. The last three are based on Canada Post's routes/delivery
zones. They create new ones all the time and probably not sequentially so
people need to subscribe to their shitty 5000$/year service

On Thu., Oct. 3, 2019, 12:23 a.m. Kyle Nuttall, <kyle.nuttall at hotmail.ca>
wrote:

> I've found a good resource to use is a business website. Particularly a
> store with multiple locations, a mall directory, or a BIA. They have
> several postal codes that are associated with their respective addresses.
>
> Unfortunately it does require manual work (or you could pair a scrapper
> with a geocoder to do the tedious part) but given there is no available
> datasets we're licenced to use currently, it's the only public resource I
> know of where you can get pockets of postal codes.
>
> As more and more get added, the zones will begin to reflect their true
> shape more accurately and it'll be easier to extrapolate.
>
> I know it's not the best answer but any bit helps I suppose.
>
> On Oct. 2, 2019 21:33, John Whelan <jwhelan0112 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I had long discussions with Canada Post about postcodes years ago.  I was
> working with Treasury Board standards group at the time looking at
> addressing standards and I'm very aware of the limitations.
>
> Rural post codes are very definitely an issue and not all postcodes used
> by Stats Canada and other government departments for example are physical
> locations.
>
> Open Data would be nice but realistically it isn't going to happen in the
> short term.
>
> Having said that what is doable is spotting postcodes that do exist but
> are not in OpenStreetMap then tagging a building with an address that
> includes a postcode in that postcode.
>
> For example  if K4A 1M7 exists in the map then it would be reasonable to
> assume that K4A 1M6 - 1M1 should also exist so could be looked for.
>
> Cobourg is an example where there are far fewer postcodes than one might
> like to see.
>
> Cheerio John
>
>
>
> Kevin Farrugia wrote on 2019-10-02 8:53 PM:
>
> I don't want to rain on the postal code party, and maybe I'm a little
> jaded from using the data, but I use the Postal Code Conversion File (PCCF)
> from Statistics Canada (who get it from Canada Post) at work.  In general I
> would say that the postal code points are in mediocre shape.
>
> Some things I've noticed about the data and postal codes in general:
> * There is usually one postal code point per postal code, although there
> are cases where there can be several points for a postal code.  For
> example, with some postal codes, if you were to make them polygons, would
> generate multiple polygons that are intersected by other postal codes.
> * Postal codes, especially rural ones, pop in and out of existence and so
> are a little harder to track and are less permanent than addresses.
> * Postal codes will sometimes jump from one side of a road (even
> municipality) between years as they try to improve accuracy.
> I would check out the Limitations section if you'd like to see more:
> https://www.canadapost.ca/cpc/assets/cpc/uploads/files/marketing/2017-postal-code-conversion-file-reference-guide-en.pdf
>
> Forward Sortation Areas do exist as open data through Statistics Canada -
> StatsCan generates these FSA polygons based on respondents of the Census.
> There are two limitations to this dataset on which I would advise against
> importing it into OSM:
> 1) Since businesses do not respond to the Census, they generally do not
> have FSAs for large industrial areas.  These areas are covered by the
> nearest FSA that they know about/can define, but this can also cause some
> movements of boundaries from Census to Census.
> 2) Because postal codes are created for the purpose of mail sortation and
> delivery, the FSA boundaries StatsCan is able to create are not exact.
> Here's the reference document if you're interested:
> https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/92-179-g/92-179-g2016001-eng.htm
>
> If at some point they did release it as open data, it might be decent
> enough for the purposes of general geocoding in OSM, I just don't want
> people to think it's as well maintained and reliable as some other types of
> government data.
>
> -Kevin (Kevo)
>
>
> On Wed, 2 Oct 2019 at 20:39, James <james2432 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> funny you should mention geocoder.ca
>
> The owner of that website was sued by Canada Post because he was crowd
> sourcing postal codes. Just recently (2 ish years ago?) they dropped the
> lawsuit because they knew they didnt have a case(He came to the Ottawa
> meetups a couple of times)
>
> On Wed., Oct. 2, 2019, 8:08 p.m. Jarek Piórkowski, <jarek at piorkowski.ca>
> wrote:
>
> Yeah, Canada Post currently considers postal codes their commercial
> data. Crowd-sourcing all or a substantial amount of full codes seems
> infeasible. Crowd-sourcing the forward sortation areas (the first A1A)
> seems difficult since verifiability is going to be a problem
> especially around the edges of the areas.
>
> The website OpenStreetMap.org returns results for some postal codes
> from a third-party database https://geocoder.ca/?terms=1 which is not
> ODbL-compatible either.
>
> Partial mapping is causing some problems with tools like Nominatim
> that attach the nearest tagged postcode to search results, often
> resulting in improper postal codes for reverse address lookups,
> however that is arguably a tooling problem and not an OSM problem per
> se.
>
> This isn't going to be pretty until Canada Post is persuaded to free
> the data. Call your MP, everybody.
>
> --Jarek
>
> On Wed, 2 Oct 2019 at 17:38, john whelan <jwhelan0112 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > " The number one request on open.canada.ca is to open the postal code
> database.  Feel free to add your vote.
> https://open.canada.ca/en/suggested-datasets"
> >
> > Cheerio John
> >
> > On Wed, 2 Oct 2019 at 13:32, john whelan <jwhelan0112 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> On the import mailing list there is a proposal to import postcodes in
> the UK one of the reasons given was that many like to input a postcode to
> get directions on smartphones using things like OSMand.
> >>
> >> I don't think an Open Data source with the correct licensing is
> available in Canada but OSMand appears to be able to use the postcode if it
> is entered in the map as part of the address.  Is there any Open Data that
> might be useful?
> >>
> >> I don't know if it is possible but could something be used to extract
> postcodes in the current map and from there perhaps we could come up with a
> list of missing postcodes that need one address with it in mapped?
> >>
> >> As a minimum if you could add a few in you know from local knowledge
> that might help fill in some gaps.
> >>
> >> Thoughts
> >>
> >> Thanks John
> >
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