Developing a portrait of the economic value of culture to the Canadian economy, both at the national and provincial/territorial level, is an important component of making a case for governments to provide support, funding or otherwise, for the arts.

This week, we have some new tools, provided by Statistics Canada with support from the Department of Canadian Heritage and its partners: the Provincial and Territorial Culture Satellite Account (PTCSA). An offshoot of the Canadian Culture Satellite Account (September 2014), the PTSCA measures the economic importance of both the culture and sport industries to the provincial and territorial economies from two perspectives:

• Product perspective: output, GDP, jobs that result from the production of culture or sports products whether or not they’re made by businesses in the culture or non-cultural industries (sports/non-sports as well).
• Industry perspective: output, GDP, jobs that result from the production by establishments classified as belonging to cultural industries and sports industries.

What doesn’t the report cover? It only measures direct impact – increase in GDP, jobs, output tied to production, not indirect impact (an example – changes in the impact of the spending made by people employed in the cultural or sports industries).

What are some of the main findings?

• Culture GDP equalled $47.7 billion, and contributed 3% to Canada’s GDP. These figures are from 2010 (the benchmark year of the report).
• In total, culture jobs accounted for 642,486 jobs in 2010, contributing a total of 3.7% to total employment at the national level.
• The GDP of the cultural industries was $53.4 billion, and contributed 3.4% to Canada’s total GDP.
• There were 707,012 jobs in the culture industries, which is a 4.1% share of all jobs in the economy.

Broken down by province:

Newfoundland & Labrador: Culture contributed $379 million towards the GDP in 2010, which is 1.4%. Culture jobs accounted for 2.4% of the total jobs in the province (5,155). Looking at the industry perspective, the cultural industries accounted for 1.6% of total GDP ($424 million), while the overall output of cultural industries topped $711 million.

Prince Edward Island: Culture contributed $121 million towards the provincial GDP, which was 2.5%, accompanied by 1,947 jobs (2.8%). On the industry perspective, the cultural industries accounted for $190 million (3.9%) of the total GDP, while adding 2,355 jobs.

Nova Scotia: The province’s culture GDP was $868 million, and contributed 2.6% of the total provincial GDP. Culture production created 14,305 jobs, which was 3.1% of total jobs in the province. Moving to the industry perspective side, the GDP of the cultural industries was $1.1 billion, with 17,195 jobs through the province – accounting for 3.7% of total jobs in the province.

New Brunswick: The culture GDP was $641 million (2.3%), and contributed 9,381 jobs (2.6%) to the province’s total jobs. On the industry perspective side, the GDP of cultural industries in NB accounted for $628 million (2.3%) while contributing 9,546 jobs to the provincial economy.

Quebec: Quebec’s culture GDP was $10.9 billion, which was 3.5% of Quebec’s economy in 2010. It was also the second largest share of Canada’s culture GDP, and cultural jobs totalled 153,155 for 3.9% of total jobs in the province. On the industry perspective, the GDP of Quebec’s cultural industries was valued at $12.8 billion, or 4.1% of Quebec’s economy with 174,790 jobs in 2010.

Ontario: The value of culture GDP in Ontario was $21.9 billion in 2010, representing 3.7% of Ontario’s economy. This was the largest share of Canada’s culture GDP, accounting for 45.9% of Canada’s culture GDP. The number of culture jobs was counted at 278,801, or 4.1% of the total jobs in the province. Notably, Ontario was responsible for more than half of Canada’s culture GDP in the sound recording industries, counted at 52.4%. On the industry perspective side, the GDP of cultural industries was valued at $23.8 billion with 301,090 jobs.

Manitoba: Culture GDP was $1.4 billion in 2010, which represented 2.9% of Manitoba’s economy, and was counted at 21,863 culture jobs. The industry perspective showed that the GDP of cultural industries were $1.4 billion in 2010, and 21,970 jobs.

Saskatchewan: Culture GDP in Saskatchewan was $854 million in 2010 (1.4% of Saskatchewan’s economy) and there were 12,048 culture jobs in the province (2.2%). On the industry perspective side, the GDP of cultural industries was $1.2 billion, and there were 15,102 jobs in the culture industries.

Alberta: Culture GDP in Alberta was $4.7 billion in 2010 (1.8% of Alberta’s economy), and accounted for 55,923 jobs (2.7%). On the industry perspective side, the cultural industries GDP was $5.5 billion, and the number of jobs in culture totalled 62,309.

British Columbia: The culture GDP for British Columbia was valued at $5.7 billion in 2010, which is 3% of its economy and 12% of the Canadian cultural GDP. 3.8% of the jobs in BC were culture jobs, for a total of 87,996. On the industry perspective side of things, the GDP of the cultural industries was 6.1$ billion, with 94,839 jobs.

Yukon: The culture GDP of the Yukon was $46 million in 2010 (2.0% of the territorial economy), and the number of culture jobs in the territory was 743 (3.5%). The industry perspective showed that the GDP of culture industries was $48 million, with 764 jobs.

Northwest Territories: Culture GDP in NWT was $64 million in 2010 (1.4%), with 691 culture jobs (2.7%). The GDP of culture industries, for their part, was valued at $66 million and was counted at 744 jobs.

Nunavut: Culture GDP in Nunavut was $53 million in 2010, which was 2.7% of the territorial economy. At the jobs level, the report counted 473 jobs, which is 3.8% of jobs in the territory. The industry perspective pegged the value of the cultural industries GDP at $56 million, with 526 jobs.

For more information, you can check out the PTCSA here: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/150609/dq150609b-eng.htm?HPA

Via CIMA