[R] How to load data from Statistics Canada

[Peter Dalgaard]

guox at ucalgary.ca wrote:
> We would like to load data from Statistics Canada
> (http://www.statcan.gc.ca/) using R,
> for example, Employment and unemployment rates.
> It seems to me that the tables are displayed in HTML.
> I was wondering if you know how to load these tables. Thanks,

I suspect the answer is "with some difficulty". You can do stuff like 
this, based on using the clipboard. Go to

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/090520/t090520b1-eng.htm

mark the contents of the table, then

 > dd <- t(read.delim("clipboard", colClasses="character"))
 > dd1 <- dd[-1,] # 1st row are labels
 > dd2 <- as.numeric(gsub(",","",dd1)) # strip thousands separators
Warning message:
NAs introduced by coercion
 > dim(dd2) <- dim(dd1)
 > dd2
      [,1]  [,2]  [,3]   [,4]    [,5]     [,6]  [,7] [,8] [,9]   [,10] 
[,11]
[1,]   NA 226.8 123.1 2948.0 11630.0 178768.0 122.5   NA 37.6 27822.0  1.760
[2,]   NA 224.6 117.7 2945.0 10709.0 181862.0 121.7   NA 37.1 28822.0  1.750
[3,]   NA 222.0 109.5 2932.0  9694.0 185068.0 121.1   NA 36.9 27801.0  1.730
[4,]   NA 218.8 101.2 2924.0  8968.0 187636.0 120.6   NA 36.7 26560.0  1.690
[5,]   NA 215.6  97.2 2920.0  8759.0 189702.0 120.1   NA 36.4 23762.0  1.640
[6,]   NA 213.3  96.0 2918.0  8770.0 191343.0 119.7   NA 36.2 22029.0  1.600
[7,]   NA  -1.1  -1.2   -0.1     0.1      0.9  -0.3   NA -0.5    -7.3 -0.045
      [,12]  [,13]  [,14] [,15]
[1,]    NA 2959.0 9637.0 221.8
[2,]    NA 2963.0 9635.0 218.4
[3,]    NA 2966.0 9587.0 217.1
[4,]    NA 2939.0 9368.0 211.2
[5,]    NA 2915.0 9325.0 209.4
[6,]    NA 2879.0 9199.0 210.5
[7,]    NA   -1.2   -1.4   0.5


-- 
    O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Øster Farimagsgade 5, Entr.B
   c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     PO Box 2099, 1014 Cph. K
  (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph:  (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk)              FAX: (+45) 35327907