The Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC) was established in 1986 by the National Research Council of Canada (NRC), through a grant provided by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), as one of three world-wide distribution centres for astronomical data obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST).

In subsequent years the CADC's mandate has expanded significantly to include the development and support of archives for other astronomical facilities whose operational costs are shared by the NRC. These include the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, and the twin 8-m telescopes of the Gemini Observatory.

Located at the NRC Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics (NRC-HIA) in Victoria, BC, the CADC staff consists of professional astronomers and software developers who, along with providing support for the above archives, have developed an abundance of other sophisticated tools to support and enhance the research efforts of Canadian (and international) astronomers. Their efforts ensure that the maximum possible scientific exploitation of every observation obtained at the world-class observatories supported in whole or in part by the NRC is achieved.

The CADC is now the largest astronomy data centre in the world (housing 250 Terabytes of astronomy data). In 2007 CADC served data to roughly 2000 professional astronomers (of a world population of perhaps 10,000).