INDIVIDUALS
What is the phone number and address for a person (or a company)? http://canada411.sympatico.ca/

I have a phone number and I need the address.
Canada: Reverse Lookup Search on a number, address, or area code http://www.411.ca/

How do I find out about an individual?
Canadian Who's Who is value as the largest and most authoritative Who's Who published in Canada, featuring over fifteen thousand biographical sketches. You can search up to twenty biographies in the 1997 edition by Name, Birth Date, City, or Key Word http://www.utpress.utoronto.ca/cgi-bin/cw2w3.cgi

What about their business activities?
There are several other websites devoted to the achievements of Canadians including:
Canadian Executives http://www.bluebook.ca/
Lawyers http://www.martindale.com/xp/Martindale/home.xml
Great Canadian Scientists http://www.science.ca/scientists/scientistsresults.php?search=1

CORPORATIONS
What can you tell me about a public Canadian company? http://www.SEDAR.com
System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval is the electronic filing system for the disclosure documents of public companies in Canada. SEDAR profiles contain basic information such as addresses and contact names. The Search Database screen is useful to find names of companies only.
When in a company profile, go to public documents at the bottom of the screen and click on VIEW From the displayed list Select annual information form, Click on that. A list of board members will be displayed, often with their corporate stock holdings

Try also, http://www.tse.com.The Toronto Stock Exchange, Canada's foremost capital market with over 1,400 listed companies offering over 1,600 issues, provides investors with a diverse range of stocks, proprietary derivatives, indexes and key market information.
http://www.corporateinformation.com  Free registration is required.

Carlson Online is a source of current, unbiased investment information for the Canadian investor. They draw from 15-minute delayed stock quotes, annual reports, financial statements, discussion groups, company web sites, and press releases from three major Canadian wire services. You can find information on any Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Alberta, Winnipeg listed, or CDN quoted company by any of three ways: Enter its root symbol, or partial company name, or select an industry/ exchange combination. http://www.fin-info.com

See also, Disclosure Select - Canada Collection on a CD-ROM workstation located in the Business and Government Documents library in 113 SSB. This contains records of Canadian public and some private companies.

What can you tell me about a private Canadian company?
Not too much.  Go to http://strategis.ic.gc.ca
Select Company Directories, then Database of Federally Incorporated Companies, enter the company name and retrieve government profiles for national or multi-provincial corporations listed in the Corporate Directorate's database. Information will include location, directors, gross revenues and more. Here you can obtain contact addresses for the firm and home address for the directors. Each section of the record is dated as to the last update.

What are the giving interests of the company?
CCInet helps you to explore company giving programs, social responsibility sites and other online resources for yourself, by giving you easy access to company listings and other links of interest. http://www.ccinet.org/search.cfm
NOTE: This information often also appears on the corporate website under the banner of community, community relations and sometimes even donations or philanthropy. Try the press releases to see what they have said about themselves.

Canada NewsWire is Canada's leading full-text news release website. There are also links to Federal, Ontario and Québec government news releases and a list of known corporate websites. http://www.newswire.ca/

Canada Business Service Centres: Serving as a gateway to information regarding small and medium size businesses in all provinces in Canada, the CBSC Web site provides links to dozens of government departments and to some private sector information sources. http://www.cbsc.org/

What about business rankings?
Report on Business Top 1000 http://www.robmagazine.com/
Financial Post Top 50 http://www.nationalpost.com
Does this company have a website? http://www.companiesonline.com
Check Hoover's Online for corporate capsules. http://www.hoovers.com/

FOUNDATIONS
Where can I find information on a Canadian foundation?
There are about 78,000 charities registered with the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency. Our list of Canadian registered charities includes the charity name, Business Number (BN)/Registration number, mailing address, and designation type. The information contained within this database is as provided to the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency by the charities themselves. This information has not necessarily been examined for accuracy by the CCRA.
http://www.ccra-adrc.gc.ca/menu/EmenuJAH.html Click on Search and then follow the instructions on the screen

Try also The York University Office of Research Administration (ORA). They have a list of links to major granting agencies at http://www.yorku.ca/oraweb/major_funding_sources/major_funding_sources.htm

Where can I find information on a US foundation?
The Foundation Center http://fdncenter.org/
Click on Grantmaker info and you will be transported to a page where you can lookup major US foundation donors by type of foundation.
Try also Guidestar http://www.guidestar.org/ and follow the instructions on the screen

Is there anything about other charities and non-profits?
CharityVillage encourages, supports and serves the 175,000 registered Canadian charities and nonprofit organizations, and the millions of professionals, staffers, volunteers, and donors. CharityVillage has no religious or political affiliation, and strives to maintain objectivity and balance in its treatment of issues.  http://www.charityvillage.com/

GOVERNMENT
Which are the most useful government sites?
The Federal Parliament site has links to biographies on all Senators and Members. http://www.parl.gc.ca/common/SenatorsMembers.asp?Language=E&Parl=37&Ses=1

The Province of Ontario Members of the Provincial Parliament
http://www.ontla.on.ca/Members/mailing_addresses/index.htm

The University of Waterloo Library has created a page of links to government sites. Find provincial, municipal and other links here. http://tug.lib.uwaterloo.ca/gp/

Intergovernmental Online Information Kiosk
The Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) is a central government agency. In this capacity, its mission is to help the Government of Canada manage its human, financial, information and technology resources. The TBS Internet site is the gateway to policies, directives, regulations and other documents that provide information, advice and guidance to federal departments.
The Chief Information Officer Branch (CIOB) has established a Website to communicate information about their programs and services and make information available to the public. The site is full of links to services, databases, information sets and more. http://www.cio-dpi.gc.ca/cio-dpi/links/links-liens_e.asp

INTERNET SEARCHING
What is the best way to search the World Wide Web?
I prefer Copernic. This free search agent retrieves information from the Web, newsgroups, and e-mail directories. It uses information sources such as AltaVista, Excite, Yahoo, HotBot, Infoseek, Lycos, Magellan, Open Text, WebCrawler, and DejaNews. The results are displayed in order of relevancy, and duplicates and unreachable documents are automatically filtered out.
It works through software that you download from www.Copernic.com and install on your machine. The searches remain on your machine and can be reviewed.

Who else has good links for finding information?
Julian Sher, a freelance Internet trainer and columnist established this site of links to government offices in Canada. Scroll down from the top of this page to view some good tips for searching for Canadian information. http://www.journalismnet.com/search.htm

Compiled by: Allan Friedman friedman@yorku.ca,(416) 650-8142, February 8, 2002