{"id":"OpenGovernmentLicenceCanada","title":"Open Government Licence - Canada","reviewed_on":"2026-09-15","reviewer":"Giray Havur","text_source":"https://open.canada.ca/en/open-government-licence-canada","text_retrieved":true,"verdict":"corrected","summary":"The record models version 2.0 of the Canadian Open Government Licence, confirmed from the Versioning section of the text. The model is the same block the UK Open Government Licence record carries, which fits, since the two documents say almost the same thing. Applied: the SPDX identifier OGL-Canada-2.0, the licence-notice duty and the modified-works permission. The share-alike and add-statement prohibitions are unsupported and proposed for removal.","findings":[{"rubric":1,"severity":"minor","field":"spdx:licenseId","description":"The record carried no SPDX identifier although its title is word for word the SPDX name of OGL-Canada-2.0 and its cc:legalcode is the SPDX seeAlso URL. The text confirms the version: \"This is version 2.0 of the Open Government Licence - Canada.\" Added.","action":"applied","change":"spdx:licenseId \"OGL-Canada-2.0\" ;"},{"rubric":1,"severity":"minor","field":"dct:alternative","description":"The record has no dct:alternative, so keyword search finds it only by its exact title. Proposed.","action":"proposed","change":"dct:alternative \"OGL Canada\",\n        \"OGL-Canada-2.0\",\n        \"Open Government Licence Canada 2.0\" ;"},{"rubric":2,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:target","description":"dalicc:CreativeWork, dcmitype:Dataset and dcmitype:Software. The definition of Information is broad, \"information resources protected by copyright or other information that is offered for use under the terms of this licence\", so no asset type is excluded. The family-rule baseline flags the software type; here it is defensible rather than certain.","action":"none"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:permission","description":"The permissions follow the freedoms list: \"Copy, modify, publish, translate, adapt, distribute or otherwise use the Information in any medium, mode or format for any lawful purpose.\" Commercial use is express in the grant, \"including for commercial purposes\", so cc:CommercialUse and the two fee permissions are supported.","action":"none"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"dalicc:ModifiedWorks was missing although the freedoms list names modify, adapt and distribute in one sentence, so distributing a modified version is plainly granted. Added, which also aligns the record with OpenDataLicenceAgreement, the record of the same text issued by the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying.","action":"applied","change":"odrl:permission [ a odrl:Permission ;\n        odrl:action dalicc:ModifiedWorks ] ;"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"cc:ShareAlike is modelled as a prohibition. The licence says nothing that forbids the licensee from placing an adaptation under a share-alike licence, and in ODRL a prohibition asserts that the licensee must not do the act. Proposed for removal, together with the identical statements in the UK Open Government Licence and the Open Supreme Court Licence.","action":"superseded","superseded_by":2,"change":"remove:\n    odrl:prohibition [ a odrl:Prohibition ;\n            odrl:action cc:ShareAlike ]"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"minor","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"dalicc:addStatement is modelled as a prohibition, which the vocabulary reads as a duty to pass the licence on unchanged. The licence imposes no such condition. Proposed for removal.","action":"superseded","superseded_by":2,"change":"remove:\n    odrl:prohibition [ a odrl:Prohibition ;\n            odrl:action dalicc:addStatement ]"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"dalicc:promote is supported twice over: the Exemptions list excludes \"the names, crests, logos, or other official symbols of the Information Provider\" and trade marks and official marks, and the Non-endorsement section forbids any use that suggests official status or endorsement.","action":"none"},{"rubric":5,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:duty","description":"The licence requires two things and the record modelled one: \"Acknowledge the source of the Information by including any attribution statement specified by the Information Provider(s) and, where possible, provide a link to this licence.\" cc:Notice was missing. Added next to cc:Attribution on the cc:DerivativeWorks and odrl:distribute permissions.","action":"applied","change":"odrl:duty [ a odrl:Duty ;\n        odrl:action cc:Notice ] ;   # added to the cc:DerivativeWorks and odrl:distribute permissions"},{"rubric":6,"severity":"info","field":"dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer","description":"dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer holds both paragraphs of the No Warranty section verbatim, the second of which is the liability exclusion. The Exemptions list, which carves out personal information and third-party rights, is not carried anywhere.","action":"none"},{"rubric":7,"severity":"info","field":"cc:jurisdiction","description":"dalicc:worldwide and dalicc:perpetual match the grant, \"a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive licence\". The licence adds \"This licence is governed by the laws of the province of Ontario and the applicable laws of Canada\" and puts the forum in Ontario or the Federal Court, which the model has no field for: cc:jurisdiction records the scope of the grant, not the governing law. Worth noting for a Canadian record, where a reader may expect the country.","action":"none"},{"rubric":7,"severity":"info","field":"cc:attributionName","description":"cc:attributionName and dct:publisher say \"Her Majesty the Queen in right of Canada\". The current text says His Majesty the King, the wording having changed with the accession in 2022. Cosmetic, and the licence itself is unchanged; left alone so that the record is not edited for a reason that has nothing to do with its terms.","action":"none"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"record","description":"The exemptions list, the automatic end of the rights on breach and the reservation of official symbols have no terms. Proposed terms: dalicc:exemptedMaterial, dalicc:terminationOnBreach.","action":"none"},{"rubric":9,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"The consistency check reports no conflict, before and after the corrections.","action":"none"},{"rubric":10,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"the review of duplicates (see the review method, docs/LICENSE_REVIEW.md section 3) flagged one identical signature across this record, the UK Open Government Licence and the Open Supreme Court Licence. For the UK and Canadian Open Government Licences that is nearly right, the two texts being close relatives; the differences that remain, the UK exemptions list and the Canadian choice of law, are outside the model anyway. The stronger finding is inside the Canadian pair: this record and OpenDataLicenceAgreement carry the same text and were modelled differently, and after the review they agree except for the two prohibitions proposed for removal here.","action":"none"},{"rubric":10,"severity":"major","field":"record","description":"Standard-license addition of 2026-09-15, decision 9: the record was corrected against its new siblings and versioned. The review's finding on family consistency: the record prohibited cc:ShareAlike and dalicc:addStatement without support from the text, which prescribes the attribution wording, and it carried no dct:alternative at all, so it could not be found by searching for its SPDX identifier OGL-Canada-2.0.","action":"applied"}],"family":"Government licenses (United Kingdom, Canada)","port_of":null,"variant_kind":null,"notes":"The licence is the base document for Canadian federal open data and the parent of OpenDataLicenceAgreement in this review group. Nothing in this review is legal advice."}