Yes, the data is redisseminated.
I can only redisseminate Statistics Canada data if it is in the form of a table, chart, graph or map. I cannot use data provided by Statistics Canada, pass it on to David and ask him to do something with it. I draw up a map and I ask him to tell me a story based on this data. If I turn the data over to him, I am in fact infringing Canada's copyright legislation.
This goes for all works created by the federal government. They are subject to Crown copyright. David and I, along with several other organizations, have asked that Creative Commons Attribution or Creative Commons Public Domain Database licenses be granted to protect copyright in Canadian digital data, whether scientific, geomatic, administrative or federal government data. If such licenses were granted, this would mean that I could take Statistics Canada data, analyse them and share them with David who could then use them for another purpose. If I wanted to, I could analyse the data and resell my research findings.
Under the Crown copyright system, if the government does not like what I say, then it can take back the data. This is also a bit of a problem, one that came to light when the government started to influence the questions asked in the census. It is a regressive policy. We would not want all digital data to be controlled in the same way, especially public digital data on the different geographic zones we talked about earlier. That is the problem with the Crown copyright system. Federal government data cannot be shared or redisseminated or used to create other digital products.