An interdisciplinary project headquartered at the University of Alberta, in collaboration with the universities of Guelph, Montréal and Victoria, aims to create a comprehensive Canada-wide database for longitudinal analysis that depicts millions of individual and family trajectories from 1852 to 1916.  Peter Baskerville at Alberta leads the Linked Infrastructure for National Censuses (LINC) project. Assisting Baskerville are Lisa Dillon at Montréal, Kris Inwood at Guelph and Eric Sager at Victoria. First public announcement of the project was made at the State of the World Conference, University of Alberta, October 4 2008.

LINC will connect millions of Canadians at ten-year and closer intervals 1852-1916 in a database of individual transitions through time. Data on life-course behaviour is needed because what happens to people today and tomorrow is affected by genetic inheritance, family environment and past experiences.

The LINC infrastructure will transform our understanding of long-term social, demographic and economic change for Canadian women and men, aboriginal and immigrant-descendent communities, particular regions and the nation as a whole.