The University of Victoria Research Data Centre (UVic RDC) is a research facility at the University of Victoria. It is a partner of the Canadian Research Data Centre Network (CRDCN). The CRDCN is a premier data platform for leading edge research and training in the quantitative economic, social and population health sciences. We facilitate access to Statistics Canada data through the Network to advance knowledge in these crucial areas and inform public policy.
The RDC was opened in the summer of 2006 as a "branch" centre and became a stand-alone centre in 2023. Support for the establishment of the UVic RDC was provided by The Canadian Foundation for Innovation and the BC Knowledge Development Fund. Ongoing operating support for the CRDCN is provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, and Statistics Canada. Local operating costs are underwritten by an annual fixed contribution by the Office of the Vice-President Research and Innovation (VPRI) and the remaining costs are allocated across faculties based on branch use. Currently the following faculties contribute to the operation of the UVic RDC: Social Science, Business, and Education.
The UVic RDC provides access, for approved projects, to a growing variety of Statistics Canada confidential microdata household, population and workplace files. The microdata used by researchers come primarily from Statistics Canada Survey Master files. Increasingly, the Research Data Centres (RDCs) are repositories of administrative records from a variety of sources including tax, employment insurance, social assistance, and hospitalization records. These include: