As an advocate of using data, I think it would potentially be a mistake for me to throw out ideas without actually doing any analysis. I think the thing you would want to do is to take the type of analysis that we did here globally and apply it to Canada and try to understand what types of data could potentially create the most value in Canada.
As we looked at it we did find, in transportation for instance, tremendous potential. In education we found tremendous potential. What you would need to do is to try to understand, from a Canadian perspective, where the most bang for the buck would be. I think it would be a mistake for me to speculate without having actually done some analysis, given that we actually believe in data as the way to make those decisions.
That being said, I do think the other insight you had was incredibly important, which is that “field of dreams” doesn't work by itself. You make the data available and benefits occur. You actually need to create a vibrant ecosystem of users of data. What that means is engaging with people who will develop programs, develop apps that actually use the data that make it useful to companies and individual citizens, etc.
As I said before, that's almost a marketing game. What we've seen here in the United States, the government has done things like create events. I know that in Canada, for instance, I was in Toronto for the CODE hackathon. It was one of those events that made it more noticeable to people who write computer programs that in fact there's a vast source of data they can use to create new applications. Events and contests, even advertising, quite frankly, are some of the things that have to happen in order to create an ecosystem of, let's call it loyalty. The customers of the data who are the developers of applications have to first, be aware, and second, incented to create applications using open data.