I'll try to address your questions the best we can. First, on your question about being available free of charge, that's an important part of our open data portal. Our open data assets are available free of charge. In fact, Statistics Canada had formerly been charging for access to their data and with our work with Statistics Canada on open data, or data.gc.ca, they have eliminated their fees.
On March 4th, 2014. See this statement in context.