About GovTrace
Government data is scattered across dozens of sites. GovTrace connects the dots.
Who built this
GovTrace is an open-source civic transparency project by Guilherme Eckert. It is free to use, free to audit, and free to contribute to.
The goal is simple: anyone — a journalist, a researcher, a curious citizen — should be able to type a name and instantly understand how that person or organization connects to the flow of public money and political influence in Canada.
Why it exists
Canada publishes excellent open data — Elections Canada, the Lobbying Registry, federal contracts, international aid — but each dataset lives on a different government website, in a different format, with different search tools.
Connecting them by hand takes a journalist hours of work. GovTrace does it in milliseconds using AI-assisted entity matching to recognize that “CGI Inc.” in contracts and “CGI Group” in lobbying records are the same organization.
No editorializing. No accusations. Just the public record, organized so anyone can read it.
How it works
Ingest
A background pipeline fetches and normalizes public datasets on a weekly or quarterly schedule, depending on how often the source updates.
AI entity matching
Claude (Anthropic’s AI) compares names across datasets to resolve the same person or organization appearing under slightly different spellings. Every match shows a confidence score and the AI’s reasoning so you can judge it yourself.
Fuzzy search
PostgreSQL’s pg_trgm extension powers tolerant full-text search — typos and partial names still find the right entity.
Cross-referencing
Once you search a name, GovTrace shows all their records across every dataset on a single page — donations, contracts, grants, lobbying meetings, votes, and more — each linking back to the original government source.
Data Sources
All 15 datasets are published by the Government of Canada under the Open Government Licence — Canada or are publicly accessible on official government websites.
Elections Canada — Political Donations
Contribution records for federal parties, candidates, and riding associations. Includes donor names, amounts, and dates.
View original sourceProActive Disclosure — Federal Contracts
Government contracts awarded to vendors. Includes company names, dollar values, departments, and descriptions of work.
View original sourceProActive Disclosure — Grants & Contributions
Grants and contributions awarded by federal departments. Shows recipient organizations, amounts, and program names.
View original sourceOffice of the Commissioner of Lobbying — Registrations
Registered lobbyists and their clients. Shows who is lobbying the federal government, on behalf of which organizations, and on what subjects.
View original sourceOffice of the Commissioner of Lobbying — Communications
Records of communication between registered lobbyists and designated public office holders.
View original sourceIATI — International Aid (Global Affairs Canada)
Overseas development aid projects funded by Global Affairs Canada. Shows implementing organizations, recipient countries, budgets, and disbursements.
View original sourceourcommons.ca — Parliamentary Voting Records
House of Commons division voting records covering every recorded vote since the 38th Parliament (2004). Shows how each MP voted on every bill and motion.
View original sourcePublic Accounts of Canada — Expenditures
Annual federal government expenditures by department and program, from the Receiver General for Canada.
View original sourceGovernor General — Governor in Council Appointments
Federal appointments to boards, commissions, and Crown corporations made by the Governor in Council.
View original sourceOffice of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
Disclosed travel and hospitality expenses for federal ministers, ministerial staff, and senior public servants.
View original sourcePrivy Council Office — Ministerial Travel
Proactive disclosure of travel expenses by ministers and their exempt staff.
View original sourceGazette Regulations Database
Federal regulations published in the Canada Gazette, cross-referenced with lobbying activity to surface who lobbied for what regulatory change.
View original sourceStatistics Canada — National Debt & Fiscal Data
Federal government fiscal aggregates including revenues, expenditures, and accumulated deficit.
View original sourceourcommons.ca — Parliamentary Bills
Status and text of all bills introduced in the House of Commons, including sponsoring MPs and reading results.
View original sourceParliament — MP & Senator Profiles
Biographical and contact information for all current and former Members of Parliament and Senators.
View original sourceOpen source
GovTrace is MIT-licensed and open source. The full source code — ingestion pipeline, database schema, entity matching logic, and web app — is on GitHub.
Contact
Have a question about the data, found an error, or want to suggest a new data source? Open an issue on GitHub — it’s the best way to reach the project.
Open a GitHub issueReady to start exploring?
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