Business Register Data Products: User Guide

Introduction and document purpose

This document is intended as a guide for external clients who use or seek to use information provided by the Data Integration Infrastructure Division (DIID) from Statistics Canada’s Business Register (BR).

These products include counts of active businesses by industry, geography and employment range, which can be obtained through statcan.gc.ca or through custom tabulations from the DIID on request.

Other products provided by DIID are the listings of businesses provided to provincial or territorial and federal departments under disclosure orders by the chief statistician authorized under the Statistics Act.

Please note that other Statistics Canada divisions also produce business demographic statistics.Notably, these include information from the Economic Analysis Division and the Centre for Special Business Projects.

DIID experts are available to provide further information on these products as well,or to refer to contacts in these divisions. However, they are not covered in this document.

Context: What is the Business Register?

The BR is Statistics Canada’s internal repository that keeps the baseline information about Canada’s businesses and institutions that is required for the agency’s statistical work.

The BR conceptualizes and maintains information for businesses and their individual operating entities as statistical units of observation. It also provides related statistical attributes, including the industrial activity classification; geographic location; and key measures of business size, such as the number of employees and annual revenues.

The BR is key to the compilation of coordinated, consistent and reliable information from Statistics Canada’s many economic data programs. It is the source of sampling frames for virtually all of the agency’s business and institutional surveys. Also, the BR provides the reference data and linkage keys needed to integrate and enable the use of business data from survey, administrative and other data sources across the Statistics Canada data ecosystem.

The BR can be used to produce business demography statistics, such as counts of active businesses, openings and closures, and other business dynamics.

Data sources and confidentiality

The BR is compiled and maintained primarily from administrative sources, through data Statistics Canada receives from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). Through its own processes, including statistical enterprise profiling, survey data collection and data analysis, Statistics Canada builds on the CRA-provided data to provision a fully representative and up-to-date statistical frame of business entities and their operating locations.

All BR data, whether sourced from tax information or Statistics Canada’s own processes, are obtained and maintained by Statistics Canada under the authority of the Statistics Act. Under the act,information related to individual businesses or information that can identify a specific business is strictly confidential and cannot be divulged, other than to a person employed or deemed to be employed by Statistics Canada. Under certain circumstances, specific variables are provided to federal and provincial government partners, as per the conditions outlined in the Statistics Act.

Data Integration Infrastructure Division business data products

Three categories of data products related to businesses are provided by DIID. In most cases, the coverage is restricted to businesses or government institutions meeting any of the following criteria:

  • have an employee workforce for which they submit payroll remittances to the CRA.
  • are incorporated under a federal or provincial act and have filed a federal corporate income tax form within the past three years.
  • have at least $30,000 in annual revenues.

1. Canadian business counts (formerly Canadian business patterns)

The Canadian business counts (CBCs) are produced biannually every June and December and are released in August and February. This product can be used to compare the number of businesses across North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) categories, employment size ranges, provinces and territories, and census metropolitan areas (CMAs) and the census subdivisions (CSDs) within them, as well as all CSDs in Canada with 10 or more active businesses with employees. The following data tables are available to the public on the Statistics Canada website:

  • business location counts with employees for Canada, by province, NAICS category and employment size range.
  • business location counts without employees for Canada, by province and NAICS category.
  • business location counts with employees by CMA, CSD, NAICS category and employment size range.

Website link: The Daily - In the news: Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin.

You can find all iterations of the CBC data product from the link above or through your web browser and search engine of choice using the following terms: “Canadian Business Counts” or “Canadian Business Patterns” (for historic counts).

2. Custom aggregate data tables

For all custom aggregate data table questions or orders, please email statcan.statisticalregisters-registresstatistiques.statcan@statcan.gc.ca.

Employment size ranges

  • Units: Location, establishment or enterprise counts
  • Geography: All geography
  • Industry: All levels of NAICS
  • Employment size ranges: Standard 9 ranges or custom 13 or 21 ranges
  • Confidentiality measures: None

Revenue ranges

  • Units: Location, establishment or enterprise counts
  • Geography: Province and census agglomeration (CA) or CMA
  • Industry: NAICS-2 and NAICS-3
  • Confidentiality measures: Rounding to the nearest five counts

Profit and non-profit data (December only)

  • Units: Establishment counts
  • Geography: Province
  • Industry: NAICS-2
  • Confidentiality measures: Suppression

Business type and public and private data (December only)

  • Units: Enterprise counts
  • Geography: Province and CMA (14)
  • Industry: NAICS-2
  • Confidentiality measures: Suppression

3. Business Register microdata

BR microdata files are provided to specific federal, provincial and territorial government departments or agencies under specific orders authorized by the Statistics Act. Under the terms of these orders, the use of this information is restricted to statistical or research purposes, and recipients must agree to strict protection of confidential information. Further information is available upon request.

For BR microdata questions or orders, please email statcan.statisticalregisters-registresstatistiques.statcan@statcan.gc.ca.

Other relevant information about the Business Register

Data variations caused by methodological changes, by year

Data are affected by not only business data, but also multiple conceptual and methodological factors, such as ingestion of new data sources; changes to activation, inactivation and reactivation rules; batch fixes and updates for NAICS; new NAICS classification vintages; and new geography vintages.  NAICS and geography are continuously updated, with major revisions every 5 years. These changes will take between 6-18 months to be reflected in our counts. Most recently in June 2022 counts, 2021 Census geographies replaced the 2016 geographies. NAICS 2022 replaced NAICS 2017 for the December 2022 counts.

Below is a list of major methodological changes in reverse chronological order. Please note that many smaller methodological changes occur on a regular basis.  Starting with the June 2022 counts, 2021 Census geographies replaced the 2016 geographies. NAICS 2017 was implemented with the December 2017 counts and has been replaced by NAICS 2022 for the December 2022 counts.

  • With the December 2021 counts, refinements to the geographic coding of business locations were made, which may change the geographic classification of some businesses at low levels of geography. Generally, the reclassification is to nearby zones, resulting in only minor impacts on counts for CSDs. There are no impacts on the overall counts for CMAs and CSDs and, by extension, for provinces and territories.
  • The December 2019 counts reflect a downward correction to the number of businesses, especially those without employees, because of new criteria for identifying businesses that had become inactive. Approximately 140,000 units are affected by this correction.
  • Starting in December 2014, businesses without employees now cover all enterprises that meet one of the following criteria: is incorporated or shows at least $30,000 in revenue (non-taxable or taxable). This change affects businesses that didn’t have $30,000 in taxable revenue in previous years but did have at least $30,000 combined in non-taxable and taxable revenue. These businesses will now be included and represent approximately 600,000 units. Business counts in NAICS sectors 53 (real estate and rental and leasing) and 62 (health care and social assistance) have the largest increases.
  • In December 2014, a revision of the employer status on all units of the BR resulted in approximately 70,000 businesses with employees shifting to the businesses without employees category. This change is mostly noticeable in the smaller employment size ranges. Business counts in NAICS sectors 72 (accommodation and food services), 62 (health care and social assistance), 31–33 (manufacturing) and 44–45 (retail trade) see the largest decreases.
  • There are two industrial classification categories introduced in 2014: unclassified, which is a new category for businesses that haven’t received a NAICS code, and classified, a category for businesses that have received a NAICS code. The impact of adding the unclassified category is an additional 78,718 locations with employees and 313,107 locations without employees. These counts can be easily identified, because they’re in a separate category.
  • A small portion of the increase in businesses in December 2013 is attributable to new rules regarding the acceptance of auto-coded NAICS codes, which resulted in these businesses being included in the data. The impact wasn’t as widespread as the initial NAICS auto-code increase in June 2013—it mostly affected non-employers across most sectors.
  • A large increase in the June 2013 reference period is attributable to incorporated businesses that are now required to auto-code a NAICS code to record their tax form information with the CRA. The increase represents an accumulation of about two years of auto-coding. This change affects almost every sector and accounts for most of the growth in the data from December 2012 to June 2013.
  • For the first time, the December 2010 reference period includes all unincorporated (T1) businesses with sales of at least $30,000. This integration of T1 businesses is intended to create a more comprehensive representation of the business population on our register. Specifically, this change has mainly affected the following NAICS sectors: 53 (real estate and rental and leasing), 44–45 (retail trade) and 62 (health care and social assistance). The introduction of these units hasn’t had a significant impact on total business counts and represents 1.6% of all locations in December 2010.
  • The December 2008 and June 2009 reference periods show a decrease in the number of businesses. This can be attributed to the introduction of new inactivation rules that expand the ability to identify units that aren’t reporting any economic activity.
  • The December 2008 reference period introduced the use of “statistical location” counts, besides the usual establishment counts. The use of location counts provides a better measurement of business units. Definitions of the statistical establishment and location are provided later in this document under the “Statistical establishment” and “Statistical location” sections.
  • The December 2007 reference period is based on the redesigned BR. The statistical structure (including establishments) has been simplified to better reflect the operating structure of the business. The decrease in the number of establishments is the result of our continuous efforts to detect inactive businesses as early as possible.
  • The June 2006 reference period shows an increase in the number of businesses because of a methodological change. There is a new way of identifying newcomers on the BR. The following NAICS sectors have been affected: 48–49 (transportation and warehousing), 53 (real estate and rental and leasing) and 54 (professional, scientific and technical services).
  • In December 2000 and June 2005, the number of smaller businesses declined. The BR has analyzed new administrative sources to detect business closures more rapidly and accurately. This has resulted in the use of new signals that are now part of the processes to update the BR.

Data quality and limitations

The BR is largely based on the Business Number (BN) registration source as collected by the CRA.

Time series

Changes to the BR’s methodology or to business industrial classification strategies can cause increases or decreases in the number of active businesses. As a result, the data do not represent changes in the business population over time. Statistics Canada recommends that users not use the data as a time series.

To view recent methodological changes, please refer to the Data variations caused by methodological changes, by year section above.

Creations

Generally, the creation of an entity on the BR occurs shortly after the business registers with CRA. The BN registrations are used to update the BR database weekly. Businesses with multiple locations may also be contacted or profiled to obtain the necessary information for the creation of location entities.

Inactivation

Businesses are assigned an inactive status on the BR when neither a tax payment nor payroll remittance has been made by these businesses for some time or following the closure of CRA tax accounts.

North American Industry Classification System

For newly created businesses, the primary industrial coding is initially processed using automated coding software. This software evaluates the activity description indicated by the business and assigns the appropriate industry classification coding to about 50% of new business records. Activity descriptions lacking precision are subjected to a manual coding process.

Key definitions found in Business Register Data

Statistical entities

Statistical enterprise

An enterprise is the legal operating entity at the top of the operating structure. There is only one enterprise per operating structure. It’s associated with a complete set of financial statements.

Statistical establishment

A statistical establishment is the production entity or the smallest grouping of production entities that

  1. produces a homogeneous set of goods or services.
  2. doesn’t cross provincial boundaries.
  3. provides data on the value of output, together with the cost of principal intermediate inputs used, along with the cost and quantity of labour resources used to produce the output.

Statistical location

The location is an operating entity, specifically a production entity that

  1. conducts economic activity at, or from, a single physical location or group of locations.
  2. resides within the smallest standardized geographical area.
  3. provides employment data at a minimum.

Employment

Source

Employment is based on both corporations’ payroll remittance and profiling and survey data. These data are edited and imputed before being used as input for other processes.

For simple units, attached to only one legal entity, the employment is derived from payroll deductions using the second maximum input within the last 12 months of data. For the complex units, aggregated employment, obtained from profiling, is first determined at the enterprise level. This value is then distributed at the establishment and location levels based on the profiled employment distribution from the BR.

Employment size ranges

The following are the standard employment size ranges (nine) available in the BR:

  • 0 (without employees)
  • 1 to 4
  • 5 to 9
  • 10 to 19
  • 20 to 49
  • 50 to 99
  • 100 to 199
  • 200 to 499
  • 500 and over.

Employment size ranges of 13 and 21 are also available upon request.

Employment size range 13:

  • 0 (without employees)
  • 1 to 4
  • 5 to 9
  • 10 to 19
  • 20 to 49
  • 50 to 99
  • 100 to 199
  • 200 to 499
  • 500 to 999
  • 1,000 to 1,499
  • 1,500 to 2,499
  • 2,500 to 4,999
  • 5,000 and over.

Employment size range 21:

  • 0 (without employees)
  • 1 to 4
  • 5 to 9
  • 10 to 19
  • 20 to 29
  • 30 to 49
  • 50 to 99
  • 100 to 149
  • 150 to 199
  • 200 to 249
  • 250 to 299
  • 300 to 399
  • 400 to 499
  • 500 to 999
  • 1,000 to 1,499
  • 1,500 to 1,999
  • 2,000 to 2,499
  • 2,500 to 2,999
  • 3,000 to 3,999
  • 4,000 to 4,999
  • 5,000 and over.

Locations without employees include the self-employed (i.e., those who don’t maintain an employee payroll but may have a workforce that consists of contracted workers, family members or business owners). They also include employers who didn’t report employees in the last 12 months.

Note:

BR employment data should be used with caution. The methodology on the BR used to derive the number of employees for a given business is to select the second-highest monthly value from the last 12 months to reduce volatility for survey sampling. As well, the file contains employment size ranges, which can affect the ability to compile totals. For these reasons, employment data should be used with caveats when attempting to calculate an employment total for any given NAICS category or geography. It is more straightforward to use the data to compile aggregate counts of businesses by NAICS category, geography and employment size class.

Geography

The Standard Geographical Classification (SGC) is Statistics Canada’s official classification for the geographical areas in Canada. It was developed to facilitate the analysis of statistical data using a uniform geographical area definition. It produces a range of geographical areas that are useful for analysis, data collection and compilation on this basis. It is intended primarily for the classification of statistical units such as locations.

A business is geolocated using its available address information. This geolocation process will aim to code the business at the most precise level possible. When insufficient address information exists, the postal code is used as a last resort. Since the postal code is designed by Canada Post to target the efficient delivery of the mail, there are situations where one postal code may not align exactly to the boundaries of a single SGC geographic unit. In such cases, a default SGC is selected for the business. The smaller and rural geographic units are more likely to be subject to this possibility.

For more detailed information, please visit Geographic classifications.

Structure of the Standard Geographical Classification

Each of the three sets of areas covers all of Canada. They are hierarchical: a CSD aggregates to a census division (CD), which in turn aggregates to a province or territory.

(1) Province and territory

The terms “province” and “territory” refer to the major political units of Canada. From a statistical point of view, province and territory are basic areas for which data are tabulated. Canada is divided into 10 provinces and 3 territories.

(2) Census division

“Census division” (CD) is the general term for provincially legislated areas, such as counties and regional districts, or their equivalents. CDs are intermediate geographic areas between the province or territory level and the municipality (CSD).

Usually, they are groups of neighbouring municipalities joined together for the purposes of regional planning and managing common services (such as police or ambulance services). These groupings are established under laws in certain provinces of Canada.

(3) Census subdivision

“Census subdivision” (CSD) is the general term for municipalities (as determined by provincial or territorial legislation) or areas treated as municipal equivalents for statistical purposes (e.g., Indian reserves, Indian settlements and unorganized territories).

Please take note, when using the CSD, of the volatility of the counts between the different reference periods. Units move from one CSD to another, not because of actual changes in physical location, but because of changes in linkages between a specific CSD and a postal code.

Statistical Area Classification

The Statistical Area Classification (SAC) groups CSDs according to whether they are a component of a CMA, CA, or CMA and CA influenced zone (MIZ). The MIZ categorizes all CSDs in provinces and territories that are outside CMAs and CAs. CSDs within provinces that are outside CMAs and CAs are assigned to one of four categories according to the degree of influence (strong, moderate, weak or no influence) that the CMAs or CAs have on them. CSDs within territories that are outside CAs are assigned to a separate category.

The SAC is a variant of the SGC. CSDs form the lowest level of the classification variant. The next level consists of CMAs, CAs and MIZs, including the territories. The highest level consists of two categories that cover all Canada’s land mass:

  • inside CMAs and CAs
  • outside CMAs and CAs.

The SAC provides unique numeric identification (codes) for these hierarchically related geographic areas. It was established for the purpose of reporting statistics.

Census metropolitan area and census agglomeration

A CMA or CA is formed by one or more adjacent municipalities centred on a population centre (known as the core). A CMA must have a total population of at least 100,000, of which 50,000 or more must live in the core. A CA must have a core population of at least 10,000. To be included in a CMA or CA, other adjacent municipalities must have a high degree of integration with the core as measured by commuting flows derived from previous census place of work data.

If the population of the core of a CA declines below 10,000, the CA is retired. However, once an area becomes a CMA, it is retained as a CMA even if its total population declines below 100,000 or the population of its core falls below 50,000. All areas inside the CMA or CA that aren’t population centres are deemed rural areas.

Other geographies

Economic region

An economic region is a grouping of complete CDs, with one exception in Ontario, created as a standard geographic unit for analysis of regional economic activity.

Census tract

A census tract is an area that is small and relatively stable. Census tracts usually have a population of 2,500 to 8,000. They are in large urban centres that must have an urban core population of 50,000 or more.

Federal electoral district

A federal electoral district is an area represented by a Member of Parliament elected to the House of Commons.

Dissemination area

A dissemination area is a small area composed of one or more neighbouring blocks, with a population of 400 to 700 people. All of Canada is divided into dissemination areas.

Forward sortation area

A forward sortation area is an area composed of the first three digits of the postal code, which is a six-character code defined and maintained by Canada Post for the purpose of sorting and delivering mail.

“000” residue

Please note that codes have been created for residues. They consist of the province or territory code followed by zeroes. This residual category reflects statistical units in Canada where there is insufficient information to precisely locate the locations within a CD or CSD as determined by the SGC.

Industry codes: North American Industry Classification System

NAICS is an industry classification system developed by the statistical agencies of Canada, Mexico and the United States. It’s designed to provide common definitions of the industrial structure of the three countries and a common statistical framework to facilitate the analysis of the three economies. NAICS is based on supply or production-oriented principles to ensure that industrial data, classified to NAICS, are suitable for the analysis of production-related issues such as industrial performance.

For more detailed information, please visit North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Canada.

NAICS is a system encompassing all economic activities. It has a hierarchical structure.

NAICS is a system encompassing all economic activities. It has a hierarchical structure.
North American Industry Classification System
Sectors two digits
Sub-sectors three digits
Industry groups four digits
Industries five digits
National industries six digits

Revenue

These revenues are derived mostly from administrative files from the CRA. They are based on both corporations’ income tax revenues and goods and services tax (GST) sales remittances. These data are at first edited and imputed before being used as input for other processes. For simple units, attached to only one legal entity, the revenue is derived from a regression model using the GST sales as the independent variable, the income tax revenue being the dependent variable. For the complex units, aggregated revenue is first determined at the enterprise level. This value is then distributed at the establishment and location levels based on the profiled revenue distribution from the BR.

Contact us

Dissemination Unit
Data Integration Infrastructure Division
Statistics Canada
Tunney’s Pasture
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0T6

statcan.statisticalregisters-registresstatistiques.statcan@statcan.gc.ca

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