Canada Vehicle Recalls (Transport Canada Open Data)

Extract vehicle safety recall records from Transport Canada's official open-data registry — updated daily, zero scraping required.

What it does

Fetches the Government of Canada's Transport Canada Vehicle Recall Database (VRDB) — an authoritative, machine-readable CSV published under the Open Government Licence — and returns structured recall records filtered by date range, vehicle make, category, and keywords.

Two data modes are available:

• recent60 (default) — last 60 days of recalls (~23,000 rows), refreshed daily. Fast and lightweight.
• full — complete historical recall database (~100 MB). Use this for research, compliance audits, or building a persistent local database.

Why Transport Canada data? It is the official federal record of all vehicle safety recalls issued in Canada. It is published directly by the regulator (Transport Canada), updated daily, and available under a permissive open licence that allows copying, redistribution, and commercial use with attribution. No proxies, no scraping, no fragile HTML parsing.

Use cases

• Automotive dealers and fleet managers — monitor recalls affecting vehicles in your inventory or fleet; trigger service campaigns before customers report issues.
• Car buying services and used-car platforms — enrich vehicle listings with outstanding recall status to build buyer trust and reduce liability.
• AI agents and chatbots — answer "is my car recalled?" questions with real-time official data.
• Insurance companies and vehicle telematics firms — assess recall exposure across insured vehicles; flag high-risk makes and systems.
• Consumer safety advocates and journalists — track newly issued recalls, identify systemic patterns (e.g., airbag failures across manufacturers), and monitor recall completion rates.
• Regulatory compliance teams — maintain an up-to-date local database of Canadian recall activity for audit purposes.

Data source & licence

• Source: Transport Canada, Government of Canada
• Dataset: Transport Canada Vehicle Recall Database
• 60-day CSV: https://opendatatc.tc.canada.ca/vrdb_60days_daily.csv
• Full history CSV: https://opendatatc.tc.canada.ca/vrdb_full_monthly.csv
• Licence: Open Government Licence – Canada — permits copying, redistribution, and commercial use with attribution.
• Update frequency: Daily (60-day file); Monthly (full history file)

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	"recent60"	"recent60" fetches the last 60 days (fast). "full" fetches the complete historical database (large, may take minutes).
recalledAfter	date	null	Only recalls with a recall date on or after this date (YYYY-MM-DD).
recalledBefore	date	null	Only recalls with a recall date on or before this date.
makes	string[]	[] (all)	Filter to specific vehicle makes, case-insensitive (e.g. ["FORD", "HONDA"]).
categories	string[]	[] (all)	Filter to specific vehicle categories (e.g. ["SUV", "Passenger Car", "Light Truck"]).
keywords	string	null	Comma-separated keywords matched against recall description and system type (case-insensitive). Example: "airbag, fire risk".
maxRecords	integer	500	Maximum number of recall records to return (1–50,000).

Example input — recent Ford and Honda recalls

{
  "mode": "recent60",
  "makes": ["FORD", "HONDA"],
  "maxRecords": 200
}

Example input — SUV airbag recalls in the last year

{
  "mode": "full",
  "recalledAfter": "2025-07-01",
  "categories": ["SUV"],
  "keywords": "airbag",
  "maxRecords": 1000
}

Example input — smoke test (10 most recent recalls)

{
  "maxRecords": 10
}

Output

Records are sorted by recall date descending (newest first), then by last updated date descending. Each dataset item:

{
  "recallNumber": "2026-257",
  "year": 2024,
  "manufacturerRecallNo": "24S06",
  "category": "SUV",
  "make": "FORD",
  "model": "EXPEDITION",
  "unitsAffected": 2479,
  "systemType": "Seats And Restraints",
  "notificationType": "Safety Recall",
  "recallDate": "2024-02-11",
  "lastUpdatedDate": "2026-06-11",
  "manufacturer": "FORD",
  "description": "On certain vehicles, the second-row seat track may not have been properly welded, which could allow the seat to move unexpectedly in a crash, increasing the risk of injury.",
  "sourceUrl": "https://tc.canada.ca/en/recall-alert/transport-canada-recall?number=2026-257",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-07-20T12:00:00.000Z"
}

A RUN_SUMMARY key-value store record is also written with run metadata:

{
  "fetchedAt": "2026-07-20T12:00:00.000Z",
  "input": { "mode": "recent60", "maxRecords": 500 },
  "totalRecords": 312,
  "source": "https://opendatatc.tc.canada.ca/vrdb_60days_daily.csv"
}

Legality

This Actor fetches data from the Government of Canada's Open Government Portal under the Open Government Licence – Canada. The licence permits you to:

• Copy, modify, publish, translate, adapt, and distribute the information.
• Use it for commercial purposes.

Attribution required: "Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada."

No login, API key, or web scraping is involved. The Actor makes plain HTTP GET requests to publicly available CSV files.

Limitations

• Canada only. This dataset covers recalls issued under Canadian law. US NHTSA recalls are a separate dataset.
• English fields only. The CSV contains both English and French fields; this Actor uses English columns (CATEGORY_ETXT, SYSTEM_TYPE_ETXT, COMMENT_ETXT).
• full mode is large. The full history CSV is approximately 100 MB uncompressed and may take several minutes to stream and process, depending on filters applied. Use recent60 for routine monitoring.
• No recall completion data. The database records the recall issuance and affected units, not how many vehicles have been remedied.

Attribution

Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada.