PLACE INTELLIGENCE FOR SPORT, RECREATION AND PARKS
Six Layers. One Platform.
CAN Active Insights
A national data platform that helps leaders in the sport, physical activity, recreation, and parks sector make confident, evidence-based planning decisions.
What is CAN Active Insights?
CAN Active Insights is a by the sector, for the sector national data platform that helps leaders in the sport, physical activity, recreation, and parks sector make confident, evidence-based planning decisions.
The platform brings together data on facilities, participation, movement, community needs, and economic impact into one centralized, easy-to-use system, making it easier to find, connect, and analyze multiple datasets in one place.
By integrating multiple sources of trusted Canadian data, CAN Active Insights provides a clear picture of how sport, physical activity and recreation spaces are used, who is participating, and the impact these programs and facilities have on health, wellbeing, and local economies.
CAN Active Insights gives leaders the big picture—helping them understand what is happening in their communities and make informed decisions about where to invest time, money, and resources.
What if you could see how people are using your parks and recreation spaces in real time? Watch the CAN Active Insights Movement product webinar for a practical overview of the CAN Active Insights Movement product and learn how communities across Canada are using privacy-compliant, aggregated movement data to support smarter planning, operations, and reporting.
Why choose CAN Active Insights?
Leaders in the sport, physical activity, recreation and parks sector are navigating challenges related to limited funding, rising costs, aging infrastructure, population growth, and evolving community needs. In this environment, decisions cannot rely on assumptions; they require credible, connected data.
CAN Active Insights helps decision makers by transforming complex, fragmented data into clear, actionable intelligence that supports strategic investment and long-term sustainability.
The result: stronger business cases, smarter allocation of resources, and measurable community impact.
CAN Active Insights empowers sport, physical activity, recreation and parks organizations with:
- A centralized, national data source grounded in trusted Canadian sources
- Credible evidence that clearly demonstrates community impact
- Clear, practical insights that prioritize investment in facilities and programs
- Support for long-term planning focused on sustainable inclusion
How to get started
Access powerful data for FREE
CAN Active SPACES
Plan smarter. Invest where it matters.
- National infrastructure database
- Verified site, facility, and usage data
- Community benchmarking tools
With CAN Active SPACES, you can:
- Identify infrastructure gaps and inequities
- Align capital investments with population growth and community need
- Support asset lifecycle and long-term planning
- Strengthen grant applications and funding proposals with national benchmarks
- Inform elected officials and stakeholders with credible, visual data
- Reduce duplication of data collection and analysis
CAN Active LIVES
Understand not just what is happening – but why.
(Coming Soon)
- Community-level survey data
- Barrier and equity analysis
- Integrated data view
With CAN Active LIVES, you can:
- Identify barriers limiting participation
- Design programs aligned with real community needs
- Prioritize investments that improve access and equity
- Strengthen inclusion strategies
- Support grant proposals with community-validated evidence
- Improve participation outcomes over time
CAN Active MOVEMENT
See how people use places and spaces in your community.
- Privacy-compliant, aggregated, anonymized movement data visualized on an interactive national map
- Insights into usage patterns by hour, weekday/weekend, and month
- Historical data available back to 2022
- Coverage across communities throughout Canada
With CAN Active MOVEMENT, you can:
- Identify peak and under-utilized times
- Optimize staffing and operating hours
- Evaluate program and seasonal impact
- Understand how usage patterns shift over time
- Support data-informed planning and council reporting
- Strengthen operational efficiency with real-time evidence
Dive deeper for even more valuable insights
ACTIVITY TRENDS
This is a CAN Active MOVEMENT add-on.
- Custom 100x100m region selection
- Personalized dashboard combining multiple priority areas
- Trend tracking and performance comparisons over time
- Simple monthly email updates highlighting key changes
Starting at
$2,000
Annually
With CAN Active MOVEMENT ACTIVITY TRENDS, you can:
- Track priority sites or investment zones
- Measure the impact of programming, upgrades, or infrastructure changes
- Compare performance across neighbourhoods
- Monitor equity in access and use
- Stay proactively informed without constant manual analysis
VISITOR REPORTS
This is a CAN Active MOVEMENT add-on.
- Reliable visit estimates by day, week, month, or year
- Insights into unique visitors and repeat visitation
- Time-of-day and day-of-week analysis
- Dwell time insights
- Visitor origin data (where visitors come from)
- Entry/exit points, direction of travel, and speed of movement
Starting at
$795
per location*
With CAN Active MOVEMENT VISITOR REPORTS, you can:
- Measure the true performance of a specific site
- Demonstrate return on investment for capital or programming
- Support tourism and destination strategies
- Improve site design, wayfinding, and crowd management
- Strengthen sponsorship and partnership proposals
- Provide credible reporting to boards, councils, and funders
CAN Active IMPACT
Demonstrate value. Strengthen your case for investment.
- Social impact measurement tool
- Credible national data foundations
- Transparent methodology
Starting at
$2,400
With CAN Active IMPACT, you can:
- Demonstrate return on investment for programs and infrastructure
- Quantify health cost savings and social benefits
- Strengthen grant applications and funding proposals
- Support advocacy with evidence that resonates beyond the sector
- Inform strategic planning and long-term growth decisions
- Communicate value clearly to councils, boards, and partners
*Bulk discounts and customization available. Contact intelligence@activexchange.ca for more information.
Who is involved?
CAN Active Insights is a partnership between three Canadian nonprofit organizations: the Canadian Fitness and Lifestyle Research Institute (CFLRI), the Canadian Parks and Recreation Association (CPRA), and the Sport Information Resource Centre (SIRC). Together, these organizations bring more than 175 years of combined experience in sport, physical activity, recreation, and parks. Each has a long-standing commitment to strengthening communities through credible research, trusted data, and practical tools that support better decision-making across Canada.
At the core of this work is CFLRI, a nationally recognized leader in research and data stewardship. For decades, CFLRI has monitored sport and physical activity participation across the country, providing reliable evidence to inform policy and practice. Its work is grounded in strong ethics, scientific rigor, and transparent methodology, ensuring that data within CAN Active Insights is responsibly collected, securely managed, and aligned with Canadian privacy standards.
CPRA is a national network dedicated to the wellbeing of people, communities, and the natural and built environments. Representing over 90% of Canadian municipalities through its thirteen provincial and territorial members, CPRA is the national voice for recreation and parks, advancing collective interests through leadership in advocacy, policy, and research. As a partner in the CAN Active Insights platform, CPRA will serve as the connection to Canadian municipalities and ensure the platform is useful and relevant to decision-makers and practitioners.
SIRC has been a cornerstone of the Canadian sport and physical activity landscape for 50 years, significantly influencing the development of sports through research, knowledge dissemination, and collaboration. SIRC supports the Canadian sport sector at all levels in making better decisions through evidence-informed resources. As a partner in the CAN Active Insights platform, SIRC is committed to ensuring insights are actionable and meaningful for sport organizations.
Technology Partner
ActiveXchange provides the secure digital environment that powers the platform. They work closely with the sector to ensure the platform is reliable, scalable, and designed to meet the real-world needs of decision-makers across Canada. With a strong international track record in data integration, visualization, and analytics, they ensure complex datasets are seamlessly connected, mapped, and translated into clear insights. Their experience implementing similar platforms in multiple countries demonstrates proven success in helping sectors make smarter, data-driven decisions.
Where does the data come from?
CAN Active Insights is built as a Canadian solution, by the sector for the sector. Its foundation is the longstanding credibility of CFLRI, CPRA, and SIRC, whose commitment to transparent, evidence-based methods that prioritize accuracy, privacy, and scientific rigor ensures that every insight is reliable and defensible.
Where is the data sourced? Well, that depends on the product. One of the greatest strengths of CAN Active Insights is the power to bring data from multiple sources to one place.
The data behind CAN Active Insights is sourced from Statistics Canada, national, provincial, and territorial datasets, CFLRI’s long-standing research and monitoring systems, peer-reviewed academic literature, GPS-based signals on mobile devices, and users themselves.
All data is aggregated and anonymized before analysis and is fully compliant with Canadian privacy standards. Through the expertise of the CAN Active Insights partners, data is verified to be consistent with national reporting and policy frameworks.
Latest news
- Vibrant Communities Built With Data: How CAN Active Insights is Shaping Manitoba’s Recreation Landscape
- Data-Driven Decision-Making: How CAN Active Insights Can Support Newfoundland and Labrador’s Municipalities
- Put Better Data Behind BC’s Recreation Decisions
- CAN Active Insights Comes to New Brunswick: One Platform, Every Corner of the Province
- Data In Action: How CAN Active Insights Will Transform the Future of Recreation in Alberta
