Transport Canada (Transports Canada) is the federal department that regulates aviation, marine, rail and road transportation in Canada under the Aeronautics Act and the Canadian Aviation Regulations. In travel it is the safety-and-security regulator rather than a participant in distribution — it certifies air operators, registers aircraft on the Canadian Civil Aircraft Register, licenses pilots and drone operators, runs the Civil Aviation Daily Occurrence Reporting System (CADORS) and the Air Cargo Security program, and publishes the Canadian airports layer. It sits entirely outside the GDS/NDC distribution chain; airline economic licensing, all-in fare advertising and the Air Passenger Protection Regulations belong to the separate Canadian Transportation Agency. Its API posture is thin but genuinely open — no developer portal exists at tc.canada.ca, developer./developers./docs. subdomains do not resolve, and no OpenAPI is published anywhere. What does exist is real and ungated: a self-describing JSON/XML Vehicle Recalls Database API at data.tc.gc.ca, an ArcGIS REST and OGC WMS service for Canadian airports with air navigation services, and bulk CSV/XML extracts of CADORS, the Air Cargo Security members list and the vessel registers, all indexed through the Treasury-Board-operated open.canada.ca CKAN Action API under the Open Government Licence – Canada. No key, no account, no accreditation, no contract.
Transport Canada publishes 3 APIs on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Travel, Canada, Aviation, Regulator, and Government.
Transport Canada’s developer surface includes authentication, documentation, support, product news, and 23 more developer resources.
Transport Canada's only first-party public REST API. Returns safety-related recall records for vehicles, tires and child restraints recorded by the Defect Investigations and Rec...
Queryable Esri ArcGIS REST MapServer (currentVersion 10.81) published by Transport Canada through the Government of Canada geospatial platform, covering Canadian airports served...
OGC Web Map Service 1.3.0 endpoint for the same Canadian Airports with Air Navigation Services layer. GetCapabilities returns a conformant WMS_Capabilities document declaring Ge...
aid: transport-canada
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/transport-canada/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
name: Transport Canada
kind: company
description: 'Transport Canada (Transports Canada) is the federal department that regulates aviation, marine, rail and road
transportation in Canada under the Aeronautics Act and the Canadian Aviation Regulations. In travel it is the safety-and-security
regulator rather than a participant in distribution — it certifies air operators, registers aircraft on the Canadian Civil
Aircraft Register, licenses pilots and drone operators, runs the Civil Aviation Daily Occurrence Reporting System (CADORS)
and the Air Cargo Security program, and publishes the Canadian airports layer. It sits entirely outside the GDS/NDC distribution
chain; airline economic licensing, all-in fare advertising and the Air Passenger Protection Regulations belong to the separate
Canadian Transportation Agency. Its API posture is thin but genuinely open — no developer portal exists at tc.canada.ca,
developer./developers./docs. subdomains do not resolve, and no OpenAPI is published anywhere. What does exist is real and
ungated: a self-describing JSON/XML Vehicle Recalls Database API at data.tc.gc.ca, an ArcGIS REST and OGC WMS service for
Canadian airports with air navigation services, and bulk CSV/XML extracts of CADORS, the Air Cargo Security members list
and the vessel registers, all indexed through the Treasury-Board-operated open.canada.ca CKAN Action API under the Open
Government Licence – Canada. No key, no account, no accreditation, no contract.'
image: https://tc.canada.ca/favicon.ico
tags:
- Travel
- Canada
- Aviation
- Regulator
- Government
- Airports
- Aircraft Registry
- Aviation Safety
- Drones
- Open Data
- Transportation
created: '2026-07-28'
modified: '2026-07-28'
specificationVersion: '0.19'
apis:
- aid: transport-canada:transport-canada-vehicle-recalls-database-api
name: Transport Canada Vehicle Recalls Database API
description: Transport Canada's only first-party public REST API. Returns safety-related recall records for vehicles, tires
and child restraints recorded by the Defect Investigations and Recalls Division. The service root is self-describing —
GET the application root and it returns the tables (recall, recall-summary) and the query parameters each accepts (recall-number,
make-name, manufacturer-name, minimum-model-year, maximum-model-year, year-range, model-name) in both English and French.
Path-segment query style, format=json or format=XML, no API key, no rate limit published. English and French service trees
are mirrored at /eng/ and /fra/.
humanURL: https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/1ec92326-47ef-4110-b7ca-959fab03f96d
baseURL: https://data.tc.gc.ca/v1.3/api/eng/vehicle-recall-database
tags:
- Recalls
- Vehicle Safety
- Road Transportation
- Open Data
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/1ec92326-47ef-4110-b7ca-959fab03f96d
- type: APIReference
url: https://data.tc.gc.ca/v1.3/api/eng/vehicle-recall-database/?format=json
- type: ServiceDescriptor
url: capabilities/transport-canada-vehicle-recalls-api-root.json
- type: Documentation
url: https://open.canada.ca/data/dataset/1ec92326-47ef-4110-b7ca-959fab03f96d/resource/651cd076-d18c-49af-bd35-bfc89377e5cf/download/vehicle-recall-database-api-documentation.docx
name: Vehicle Recall Database API Documentation (DOCX)
description: The only written API documentation Transport Canada publishes — a Word document attached as a guide resource
to the CKAN dataset record, dated 22 December 2016. Documents the path-segment query form, pipe-delimited multiple values,
chained parameters, the /count modifier and the json/xml format parameter. Every behaviour it describes was re-verified
live on 2026-07-28. A French version is published alongside it.
- type: Conventions
url: conventions/transport-canada-conventions.yml
- type: BulkDownload
url: https://opendatatc.tc.canada.ca/vrdb_full_monthly.csv
- type: BulkDownload
url: https://opendatatc.tc.canada.ca/vrdb_full_monthly.xml
- type: DataDictionary
url: https://opendatatc.blob.core.windows.net/opendatatc/recalls_variables.txt
- type: License
url: https://open.canada.ca/en/open-government-licence-canada
- aid: transport-canada:transport-canada-canadian-airports-arcgis-rest-api
name: Transport Canada Canadian Airports ArcGIS REST API
description: Queryable Esri ArcGIS REST MapServer (currentVersion 10.81) published by Transport Canada through the Government
of Canada geospatial platform, covering Canadian airports served by NAV CANADA control towers or flight service stations.
The layer 0 /query operation returns JSON features carrying TC_ID, IATA code, ICAO code, airport name, type (Control Tower
/ Flight Service Station), city, province, latitude and longitude. No key required. French service tree mirrored at the
_fr path.
humanURL: https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/3a1eb6ef-6054-4f9d-b1f6-c30322cd7abf
baseURL: https://maps-cartes.services.geo.ca/server_serveur/rest/services/TC/canadian_airports_w_air_navigation_services_en/MapServer
tags:
- Airports
- Aviation
- Geospatial
- Open Data
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/3a1eb6ef-6054-4f9d-b1f6-c30322cd7abf
- type: APIReference
url: https://maps-cartes.services.geo.ca/server_serveur/rest/services/TC/canadian_airports_w_air_navigation_services_en/MapServer?f=json
- type: ServiceDescriptor
url: capabilities/transport-canada-airports-arcgis-mapserver.json
- type: BulkDownload
url: https://ftp.cartes.canada.ca/pub/tc_tc/Airports_Aeroport/canadian_airports_w_air_navigation_services/Airports_Aeroports.csv
- type: License
url: https://open.canada.ca/en/open-government-licence-canada
- aid: transport-canada:transport-canada-canadian-airports-wms
name: Transport Canada Canadian Airports OGC WMS
description: OGC Web Map Service 1.3.0 endpoint for the same Canadian Airports with Air Navigation Services layer. GetCapabilities
returns a conformant WMS_Capabilities document declaring GetMap, GetFeatureInfo and GetLegendGraphic. This is the one
Transport Canada interface that is an actual open standard — any WMS client can consume it and any other WMS server could
serve the same layer.
humanURL: https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/3a1eb6ef-6054-4f9d-b1f6-c30322cd7abf
baseURL: https://maps-cartes.services.geo.ca/server_serveur/services/TC/canadian_airports_w_air_navigation_services_en/MapServer/WMSServer
tags:
- Airports
- Aviation
- Geospatial
- OGC
- WMS
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/3a1eb6ef-6054-4f9d-b1f6-c30322cd7abf
- type: WMSCapabilities
url: capabilities/transport-canada-airports-wms-capabilities.xml
- type: Specification
url: https://www.ogc.org/publications/standard/wms/
- type: License
url: https://open.canada.ca/en/open-government-licence-canada
common:
- type: DomainSecurity
url: security/transport-canada-domain-security.yml
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/transport-canada-authentication.yml
description: Auth profile for all three public interfaces — verified anonymous, no key, no OAuth, no scopes.
- type: Conventions
url: conventions/transport-canada-conventions.yml
- type: ErrorCatalog
url: errors/transport-canada-problem-types.yml
- type: Lifecycle
url: lifecycle/transport-canada-lifecycle.yml
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/transport-canada-conformance.yml
- type: DataModel
url: data-model/transport-canada-data-model.yml
- type: Packages
url: packages/transport-canada-packages.yml
description: No first-party SDKs exist on any registry; the artifact records the registry searches and how to consume each
interface without one.
- type: WellKnown
url: well-known/transport-canada-well-known.yml
- type: LLMsTxt
url: llms/transport-canada-llms.txt
- type: Website
url: https://tc.canada.ca/en
- type: Documentation
url: https://tc.canada.ca/en/aviation
- type: OpenData
url: https://open.canada.ca/data/en/organization/tc
- type: BulkDownload
url: https://opendatatc.tc.canada.ca/
- type: License
url: https://open.canada.ca/en/open-government-licence-canada
- type: TermsOfService
url: https://www.canada.ca/en/transparency/terms.html
- type: PrivacyPolicy
url: https://www.canada.ca/en/transparency/privacy.html
- type: Support
url: https://tc.canada.ca/en/corporate-services/contact-transport-canada
name: Contact Transport Canada
description: General departmental contact routing. There is no developer or API support channel; the only technical contact
tied to a machine-readable surface is fgp-pgf@nrcan-rncan.gc.ca in the airports WMS capabilities document, which belongs
to Natural Resources Canada.
- type: News
url: https://www.canada.ca/en/transport-canada/news.html
name: Transport Canada newsroom
- type: Regulations
url: https://tc.canada.ca/en/corporate-services/acts-regulations
name: Acts and Regulations
- type: GitHubOrganization
url: https://github.com/tc-ca
- type: Registry
url: https://wwwapps.tc.gc.ca/saf-sec-sur/2/ccarcs-riacc/RchSimp.aspx
name: Canadian Civil Aircraft Register (CCARCS)
description: Web search interface only — no API and no bulk download; results capped at 1000 records per search.
- type: Registry
url: https://wwwapps.tc.gc.ca/saf-sec-sur/2/cadors-screaq/
name: Civil Aviation Daily Occurrence Reporting System (CADORS)
description: Web search interface; the underlying data is published as five bulk CSV extracts on the open data portal.
- type: Dataset
url: https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/a348c1d1-2392-4595-b5e2-c6a244a7e87f
name: Civil Aviation Daily Occurrence Report System
- type: Dataset
url: https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/d9391250-c2fa-47ed-9216-aa38eb449aaf
name: Air Cargo Security (ACS) Program - Members List
- type: Dataset
url: https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/de913542-af6f-418c-b63f-77bcf2c72393
name: Drone Flight School
- type: Documentation
url: https://open.canada.ca/en/access-our-application-programming-interface-api
name: Open Government CKAN Action API
description: The CKAN Action API that indexes Transport Canada's 49 datasets is operated by Treasury Board Secretariat for
the whole Government of Canada, not by Transport Canada. GET only; no key.
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
email: kin@apievangelist.com
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