Searching CANSIM - A Brief Guide

What is CANSIM?

CANSIM (Canadian Socio-economic Information Management System) is Statistics Canada's computerized database and retrieval service. It is updated daily and contains over 65 million series covering socio-economic, demographic, health, education and justice statistics. Retrospective coverage begins as far back as 1914, but most data start from around the 1950s - 1970s.


Who can use CANSIM?

Since February 1, 2012, CANSIM is freely available to the public from Statistics Canada's website, and is accessible via the Canadian StatisticsCampus Guide. The library also provides access to the CANSIM database hosted by the University of Toronto's CHASS division (Computing in the Humanities and Social Sciences) which is available to Memorial University's students and faculty only.


What is the scope of this guide?

Hence, this guide covers the basics of searching both Statistics Canada's CANSIM and the CHASS version from the University of Toronto. Accordingly, it is divided into two parts; Part 1 covers the publicly available version from Statistics Canada, and Part 2 (available to Memorial users), the restricted CHASS version from the University of Toronto. Memorial users may choose either one.