THIS PRODUCT DOES NOT HAVE AN OPEN LICENSE. MEMBER ORGANIZATIONS CAN DOWNLOAD IT FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY.
The Postal Code Conversion File (PCCF) is a digital file which provides a correspondence between the Canada Post Corporation (CPC) six-character postal code and Statistics Canada’s standard geographic areas for which census data and other statistics are produced. Through the link between postal codes and standard geographic areas, the PCCF permits the integration of data from various sources.
The file provides records by Postal Code, indicating the standard Census geographies that overlap with the postal code. The smallest geographic unit for which correspondence is provided for a postal code is the Dissemination Area. The Single Link Indicator (SLI) indicates whether the DA is the "best match" for the postal code (SLI = 1).
For this release of the PCCF, the vast majority of the postal codes are directly geocoded to 2016 Census geography while others are linked via various conversion processes.
A small percentage of postal codes, mostly in rural areas, may be missing or attributed to the wrong dissemination area. Canada Post is continually working to improve this product. Please notify the CDP team (information@communitydata.ca) if you are aware of any errors or omissions in the PCCF.
Identifying retired postal codes
The PCCF file is the best source of information on the postal codes and should be used before the 'retired' file. Other files may or may not be updated with information over time. To confirm if a postal code is retired, check the DMT (Delivery Mode Type) field. Any postal code with a DMT = Z is retired, regardless of whether it is in the retired postal code file or not. The dates (Birth_Date and RET_Date) indicate when the postal code was originally created, and when it was retired. Users should note that some postal codes have been retired and reintroduced at a later date. Active postal codes have a retirement date of '19000001.'
From the Reference Guide: Records representing postal codesOM retired prior to January 1, 2016 are available in a separate file called Retired 2015 (R2015.txt). This file follows the same record layout as the PCCF.
The retired postal code file is used to reduce the size of the PCCF.
Check the Reference Guide included in the file package for more information on using the PCCF.
The PCCF was updated in November 2021 and released in January 2022.