FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 1999-09-02

Standards Council of Canada clears the way for consensus on code for Nunavut

OTTAWA -- The Standards Council of Canada has championed a decision that will see "NU" become the code for the territory of Nunavut.

When Nunavut was created on April 1st, 1999, it did not have a unique territorial code for use by electronic communications systems, the territorial government, Canada Post, Revenue Canada, Statistics Canada, or any of the other government departments or Crown corporations that use geographical information.

Instead, the new territory continued to use NT, the same code as is used by the Northwest Territories. But to avoid confusion, international standards prohibit two territories from having the same code. This meant that all the interested groups had to get together and agree on a new code for Nunavut.

The Standards Council, the federal Crown corporation that oversees the National Standards System, was able to go beyond explaining what the process is for choosing a new code for a region, and to act as a liaison between the groups. Doug Langlotz, a Senior Program Officer in the Standards Division of the Standards Council, initiated this venture, investigating the issue and coordinating and organizing the meetings.

"This is an excellent example of the Standards Council fulfilling its mandate of promoting cooperation among private and public sector organizations," said Industry Minister John Manley, who is also the minister responsible for the Standards Council.

"The Standards Council was in a unique position to help," explained Peter Clark, executive director of the Standards Council. "The situation called for knowledge of standards and proven consensus building experience - the Standards Council was able to provide both."

To arrive at the code that will represent a new region, nations use a standard developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), ISO 3166-2, Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions - Part 2: Country subdivision code. It states that the code should be up to three alphanumeric characters long. In Canada, subdivision codes use two letters. And because there is so much exchange between the Canadian and United States postal systems, there is a USA/Canada agreement that codes can't be duplicated in either country.

Letters to the new territory should still be addressed to NT until Canada Post is able to adjust its equipment, which is expected to happen in 2000.

Note to editors: Geographic codes have implications for everything from making sure the mail gets where it's going to collecting taxes. A feature article is available at SCC's Web site, www.scc.ca.

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