The Canadian Census Data Discovery Partnership is pleased to announce that it is the recipient of a SSHRC grant (2021-2023) to drive a pan-Canadian research project which will improve research conditions and open access for Canada’s national historical data. The project will capitalize on past efforts in this area, completing a historical census inventory begun in 2020-2021, and it will envision how to design a bilingual census discovery portal that supports inter-operable searching across Canada’s existing historical census information sources, whether that information is qualitative, quantitative, or spatial. Over the course of this two year research project, we will hold stakeholder consultations and deliver a proof-of-concept discovery portal. A further value of the project will be recommendations about leveraging our project findings to improve usability and long-term preservation of Canadian census data, to ensure that researchers can seamlessly describe and analyze national historical data across censuses, places and communities.