Stakeholder Consultations:
Manufacturing and Wholesale Trade Statistics

Background

In Canada, manufacturing and wholesale trade are two of the larger economic sectors. They account for approximately 16% of the Canadian economy, $1.2 trillion in annual sales and over 2.2 million jobs.

At Statistics Canada (StatCan), activity in these sectors is monitored by the Manufacturing and Wholesale Trade Division (MWTD), which compiles data on both a monthly and annual basis for the manufacturing and wholesale trade industries. The monthly programs focus on providing sales, orders and inventory data for both sectors. The annual programs provide more detailed information including profits, expenses, salaries and wages. Data are available at both the national and provincial level, broken down by industry and sub-industry within the sector according to the North American Industry Classification System.

MWTD data are used by stakeholders across the country. At StatCan, these data serve as important inputs for many key economic indicators, such as the GDP. Finance Canada and the Bank of Canada use manufacturing and wholesale trade data to help determine taxation, fiscal, and monetary policy. Public and private institutions use them to study the Canadian economy, while the private sector uses MWTD data to conduct market research and calculate industry sizes within the sectors.

To ensure the ongoing relevance and utility of MWTD programs, Statistics Canada is consulting with key data users to obtain feedback about MWTD data, products and services; identify possible data gaps and/or deficiencies; highlight new and emerging needs; and uncover potential opportunities for future collaboration. This valuable input will help to guide the future direction and development of these programs.

These consultations will ensure that StatCan programs remain useful and up-to-date. It is important that we understand how StatCan data are used, and the questions that researchers have about the manufacturing and wholesale trade sectors. The consultations will also provide us with the opportunity to gather the input that we need to make decisions about the strategic planning of our programs—how our programs will look in the future, in terms of the data collected, outputs produced and services provided. This will ensure that StatCan continues to collect the right data for its clients, and we collect them in an efficient and effective way.

Discussion Questions

1. Tell us about the nature of the work that you do.
2. In the conduct of your work, how do you use manufacturing and wholesale trade data? Can you provide examples? What data do you use? Where do you get them from? How do you get them?
3. Are the manufacturing and wholesale trade programs useful for you?
4. When you have data needs, is StatCan your primary source? Why or why not?
5. Are there gaps or deficiencies in the current data that are collected? What else would you like to have?
6. Are there other products and services that you require? (e.g., special tabulations, data sharing agreements, workshops about available data).
7. What are the key policy issues and questions in the manufacturing and wholesale sectors that you foresee being asked to address over the next five years?
8. What would you say are the three most important issues that should be addressed by the manufacturing and wholesale trade statistics programs? If you could pick three areas to focus on, what would you do/fix/add?

Appendix 1: Manufacturing Statistics Key Variables and Industries

In addition to financial variables, manufacturing data on raw material purchases and sales of goods manufactured by type of product are also produced. These products are classified using the North American Product Classification System.

Statistics Canada also produces statistics on the quantity of products produced for several commodities produced in Canada.

Appendix 2: Wholesale Statistics Key Variables and Industries

Appendix 3: List of surveys and corresponding CANSIM data tables