Postal CodesOM by Federal Ridings File (PCFRF)
2013 Representation Order, Reference Guide,
June 2017

Release date: December 13, 2017
More information PDF version

This reference guide is intended for users of the Postal CodesOM by Federal Ridings File (PCFRF). The guide provides an overview of the file, the general methodology used in its creation and important technical information.

What's new?

©: This data includes information copied with permission from Canada Post Corporation.

OM: Postal code is an official mark of Canada Post Corporation.

1. About this guide

This reference guide is intended for users of the Postal CodesOM by Federal Ridings File (PCFRF). The guide provides an overview of the file, the general methodology used in its creation and important technical information.

This data product is provided 'as-is,' and Statistics Canada makes no warranty, either express or implied, including but not limited to, warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. In no event will Statistics Canada be liable for any direct, special, indirect, consequential or other damages, however caused.

2. Overview

The Postal CodesOM by Federal Ridings File (PCFRF) is a digital file which provides a link between the six-character postal codeOM and Canada's federal electoral districts (which are also known as federal ridings).

Elections Canada defines a federal electoral district (FED) as any place or territorial area entitled to return a Member of Parliament (MP) to serve in the House of Commons. Federal electoral district legal limits and descriptions are the responsibility of the Chief Electoral Officer, and are usually revised every ten years after the results of the decennial census. There are 338 FEDs in the 2013 Representation Order, the most recent revision of the federal electoral districts limits.

How to cite this guide

Postal CodesOM by Federal Ridings File (PCFRF), Reference Guide, 2017. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 92-178-G.

How to cite this product

Postal CodesOM by Federal Ridings File (PCFRF), 2017. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 92-178-X.

Acknowledgements

© This data includes information copied with permission from Canada Post Corporation.

3. About this product

Purpose of the product

The Postal CodesOM by Federal Ridings File (PCFRF) was conceived as a tool to provide a linkage between postal codesOM and federal electoral districts (FEDs).

Definitions and concepts

Geographic terms and concepts are briefly defined in the Dictionary, Census of Population, 2016 (Catalogue no. 98-301-X).</p>

Content

The PCFRF contains the active postal codesOM.

Each record of the file contains the following:

Please see Technical specifications for the data descriptions and definitions.

General methodology

Not applicable

Limitations

Some postal codesOM straddle one or more FED boundaries. The 'unique link' variable indicates if the postal codeOM is linked to one or more FEDs.

Users often link the postal codeOM in their data set to the FED in the PCFRF. When performing this link, users should be aware that the postal codeOM in their data set may represent a mailing address used by a person, not necessarily where the person actually resides. Similarly, a postal codeOM in a business-based mailing address may not necessarily indicate where the business activity took place.

Before using the Postal CodesOM by Federal Ridings File (PCFRF) with administrative files containing postal codesOM, users should be aware of some characteristics of postal codesOM that may affect their linkage to federal electoral districts on the PCFRF.

Postal delivery areas do not respect federal electoral district boundaries

A postal delivery area (as represented by the six-character postal codeOM) may straddle one or more federal electoral district boundaries. This means that, in the Postal CodesOM by Federal Ridings File, the same postal codeOM may be linked to two or more federal electoral districts. Most federal electoral districts are affected in this way in both population centres and rural areas.

Postal codesOM may be associated with post office boxes at a postal station that is not in the same federal electoral district as the client using the post office box

The postal codeOM associated with a lock box (post office box) may be geocoded to the physical location of the associated postal installation (post office). This could be located in a federal electoral district that is different from the ultimate destination of the mail delivery – the residential, industrial, or commercial location of the client renting the lock box.

Canada Post Corporation (CPC) regularly retires postal codesOM and may also reactivate retired postal codesOM for use again

Users of the PCFRF must keep in mind that the file contains only the postal codesOM from CPC that are active as of the reference data.

If the addresses of postal codesOM in a user's administrative file are not of the same vintage there may be non-matches with the PCFRF because some of the postal codesOM in the user's file may have been retired, or may even have been reactivated and re-assigned by CPC to another range of addresses outside the riding where they had previously been used.

Statistics Canada maintains an audit trail of the birth dates and retirement dates of postal codesOM in the PCCF. Users may wish to consult the Postal CodeOM Conversion File (PCCF), Reference Guide (Catalogue no. 92-154-G), available on the Statistics Canada website. An updated version of the PCCF is released concurrently with the PCFRF.

Comparison to other products/versions

Linkage of postal codesOM to more detailed geographic areas, such as dissemination area or dissemination block, is available in the Postal CodeOM Conversion File (PCCF).

Using with other products

Not applicable

Reference date

The reference date for postal codesOM contained in the PCFRF is June 2017. This is the same date as the postal codesOM contained in the Postal CodeOM Conversion File (PCCF) product released concurrently with this version of the PCFRF.

The geographic reference date is a date determined by Statistics Canada to finalize the geographic framework for which the census data are collected, tabulated and reported. The geographic reference date for the 2016 Census is January 1, 2016.

4. Technical specifications

Record layout and data descriptions

Table 4.1
Postal CodesOM by Federal Ridings File (PCFRF) record layout
Table summary
This table displays the results of Postal Codes (official mark) by Federal Ridings File (PCFRF) record layout. The information is grouped by Position (appearing as row headers), Size, Type and Description (appearing as column headers).
Position Size TypeTable 4-1 Note 1 Description
1 6 C Postal codeOM
7 5 C Federal electoral district code
12 56 C Federal electoral district name - English
68 56 C Federal electoral district name - French
124 1 C Unique link
125 3 C Weight
Note 1

The field type 'C' refers to both alphabetic and numeric characters.

Return to note 1 referrer

Postal codeOM

The postal codeOM is a six-character alphanumeric code defined and maintained by Canada Post Corporation (CPC) for the sortation and delivery of mail.

The alphanumeric characters are arranged in the form ANA NAN, where 'A' represents a letter of the alphabet and 'N' a numeric digit. The first character of a postal codeOM (allocated in alphabetic sequence from east to west across Canada) represents a province or territory or a major sector entirely within a province.

The first three characters represent a set of well-defined and stable areas known as the forward sortation area© (FSA©). Rural FSAs© are identifiable by the presence of a '0' in the second position of the FSA© code.

The last three characters identify the local delivery unit (LDU). In population centres, the LDU can specify a small and easily defined area within an FSA© such as blockface (one side of a city street between consecutive intersections with streets), an apartment building, an office building, or a large firm or organization which does large volume business with the post office. In rural areas, the LDU denotes a service area – the area serviced by rural route delivery from a post office or station (e.g., a rural route, general delivery, or post office box).

Federal electoral district code

A federal electoral district (FED) is any place or territorial area entitled to return a member to serve in the House of Commons. FED legal limits and descriptions are the responsibility of the Chief Electoral Officer, and are usually revised every ten years after the results of the decennial census. The 2013 Representation Order is the most current revision. This code uniquely identifies a federal electoral district – 2013 Representation Order. The first two digits identify the province or territory.

Federal electoral district name – English

This contains the English name of the federal electoral district from the 2013 Representation Order.

Federal electoral district name – French

This contains the French name of the federal electoral district from the 2013 Representation Order.

Unique link

The unique link value given in the file can be either '1,' which indicates the postal codeOM is linked to one FED, or '2,' which indicates that the postal codeOM is linked to two or more FEDs.

Weight

The 'weight' estimates the proportion of the population of a postal codeOM that resides within each FED. If a postal codeOM is linked to only one FED in the PCFRF, the weight is equal to 1. When a postal codeOM is linked to more than one FED, the sum of weights for that postal codeOM equals 1.0.

File specifications

The current version of the Postal CodesOM by Federal Ridings File (PCFRF) is an ASCII file and does not include any software or instructions on how to use the product within specific Geographical Information Systems (GIS) or mapping packages.

Software formats

Not applicable

System requirements

Not applicable

Installation instructions

Not applicable

Geographic representation

Not applicable

File naming convention

The naming convention for PCFRF data files is bilingual and reflects the reference date (June 2017) of the Canada Post Corporation data used in the release. The file name for this release is pcfrfNatFED2013_062017_fcpcefNatCÉF2013.zip.

5. Data quality

Linkage data quality elements provide information on the fitness-for-use of a tabular and spatial database by describing why, when and how the data are created, and how accurate the data are. The quality elements include an overview reporting on lineage, attribute accuracy, logical consistency and completeness. This information is provided to users for all linkage data products.

Lineage

Lineage describes the history of the linkage data, including descriptions of the source material from which the data were derived, and the methods of derivation. It also contains the dates of the source material, and all transformations involved in producing the final digital files.

Sources

The sources used to derive the Postal CodesOM by Federal Ridings File (PCFRF) are as follows:

Method of derivation

The PCFRF is created by extracting the active postal codesOM and the related FED codes included in the PCCF. Each FED code in this file is linked to the list of federal electoral districts – 2013 Representation Order codes and names. The linkage to the FED on the PCCF is based on the dissemination block or dissemination area geocoded in the PCCF.

The resulting PCFRF file contains active postal codeOM records of which most are uniquely linked to one federal electoral district. There are some that are linked to more than one federal electoral district and are thus represented by multiple records in the PCFRF.

The unique link variable is derived based on the postal codeOM and FED codes in the PCFRF. If the postal codeOM is linked to only one FED, the unique link is assigned a value of 1, otherwise it is assigned a value of 2.

The 'weight' estimates the proportion of the population of a postal codeOM that resides within each FED. If a postal codeOM is linked to only one FED in the PCFRF, the weight is equal to 1. If the postal codeOM is linked to more than one FED and is reported in the 2016 Census, the weight is equal to the proportion of the population that reported the postal codeOM in each of the FEDs. If the postal codeOM was not reported in the census, the weight is estimated using the address ranges in the service area of the postal codeOM as found in the Address Lookup File from Canada Post Corporation. If necessary, the weights for a postal codeOM are normalised and adjusted using the single link indicator variable in the PCCF so that the sum of weights equals 1.0.

Positional accuracy

Not applicable

Attribute accuracy

Attribute accuracy refers to the accuracy of the quantitative and qualitative information attached to each feature (such as population for a population centre, street name, census subdivision name and code).

The attribute accuracy of the PCFRF is dependent on the accuracy of the geocodes for the dissemination blocks and dissemination areas in the PCCF. The linkage of the dissemination blocks or dissemination areas to the FEDs is based on the boundaries of the FEDs as found in the Spatial Data Infrastructure.

The accuracy of the weight variable is based on the linkage to the FED in the PCFRF, the population reporting the postal codeOM in the census as well as address range data in Canada Post's Address Lookup File.

The population on which the weight variable in the PCFRF is based was derived from the total population data of the 2016 Census. Population counts are determined according to the 'de jure' method. This means that people are enumerated at their usual place of residence, regardless of where they may have been on Census Day.

If a postal codeOM is linked to more than one FED in the PCFRF and was not reported in the census, address range data from the Address Lookup File is used to estimate the weight. This is the case for about 1% of the postal codesOM in the PCFRF. Because large populations residing in apartments or collective dwelling units may be represented by only one address, this method can underestimate the weight associated with these populations.

Logical consistency

Not applicable

Completeness

Completeness refers to the degree to which geographic features, their attributes and their relationships are included or omitted in a dataset. It also includes information on selection criteria, definitions used, and other relevant mapping rules.

Completeness in the context of the PCFRF is the degree to which all valid postal codesOM are accounted for. Almost all postal codesOM, valid and active as the Reference Date according to Canada Post Corporation, have been linked to census geography.

There are 338 FEDs in the 2013 Representation Order of the Chief Electoral Office, Elections Canada. All of these FEDs are included in the PCFRF.

Appendices

See definitions of the geography universe from the Dictionary, Census of Population, 2016.

See Figure 1.1 Hierarchy of standard geographic areas for dissemination, 2016 Census from the Dictionary, Census of Population, 2016.

See Table 1.1 Geographic areas by province and territory, 2016 Census from the Dictionary, Census of Population, 2016.

See Table 1.5 Census subdivision types by province and territory, 2016 Census from the Dictionary, Census of Population, 2016.



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Copyright

Published by authority of the Minister responsible for Statistics Canada.

© Minister of Industry, 2017

Use of this publication is governed by the Statistics Canada Open Licence Agreement.

Catalogue no. 92-178-G

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