Visualizing Canadian Demographic Census data in Google Data Studio

14 July 2020

In this post I’ll share a report showing Demographic Census data in Google Data Studio. It is from Statistics Canada and the 2016 Census.

The Data Studio Report

Below is the Google Data Studio report. The data is from Statistic Canada.

The Data Source from Statistics Canada

The data is available for download as a CSV file from the Statistics Canada website.

Here is the link to the data source:
https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?Lang=E&Geo1=PR&Code1=01&Geo2=PR&Code2=01&SearchText=Canada&SearchType=Begins&SearchPR=01&B1=Ethnic%20origin&type=0

Source: Statistics Canada, 2016 Census of Population.

Statistics Canada. 2017. Canada [Country] and Canada [Country] (table). Census Profile. 2016 Census. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 98-316-X2016001. Ottawa. Released November 29, 2017.
https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/prof/index.cfm?Lang=E (accessed July 14, 2020).

The CSV file is hosted on Google Cloud Platform and accessed via Google BigQuery. You can see the method of hosting this type of file in this blog post.

How to use the Data Studio Report

The Data Studio report contains data from two different sources. The first shows data at Province and Territory level.

For example, in the screenshot below I am looking at the number of South Africans residing in Canada by Province. On the geo map the number of South Africans residing in Ontario has been highlighted.

The second map shows the number of South Africans at a Metropolitan area level. For example there are 70 South Africans living in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

Notice that the totals are slightly different between Province and Metropolitan area numbers.