Provincial and Territorial Cultural Indicators, 2021

The Provincial and Territorial Culture Indicators (PTCI) are timely economic estimates of culture and sport in Canada made possible thanks to a joint initiative of Statistics Canada and a number of partners, including the Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Heritage, and others.

Research goal

The PTCI are an extension of the Culture Satellite Account (CSA), an accounting framework developed to measure the economic importance of culture (including arts and heritage), and sport to the Canadian economy.

Methods

Data are extracted from administrative files and derived from Statistics Canada surveys and other sources.

Outcomes

Key highlights from the Provincial and Territorial Culture Indicators, 2021 include:

Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

• Canada's culture GDP rose 8.3% to $54.8 billion in 2021, with increases in all domains.
• The largest contributors to this gain were the audio-visual and interactive media (+$1.6 billion or +9.8%) and visual and applied arts (+$1.1 billion or +11.0%) domains.
• Culture accounted for 2.3% of total economy GDP in 2021, down from 2.7% in 2020.
• The top 5 provinces and territories with the highest culture GDP are Ontario ($25.2 billion, or a 45.9% share of the total culture GDP), Quebec ($11.1 billion, or a 20.2% share), British Columbia ($8.6 billion, or a 15.7% share), Alberta ($5.0 billion, or a 9.1 % share) and Manitoba ($1.6 billion, or a 2.9% share).

Culture Jobs

• Culture jobs increased 11.0% to 634,431 in 2021. Growth was led by job increases in the audio-visual and interactive media domain and the visual and applied arts domain.

• The share of culture jobs accounted for 3.3% of all jobs in Canada.
• Data from this release indicate that the culture jobs increased in all provinces from 2020 to 2021. Increases ranged from 1.8% (Yukon) to 19.1% (Nunavut).

• The top 5 provinces and territories with the highest number of culture jobs are Ontario (267,456 or a 42.2% share of total culture jobs), Quebec (143,625, or a 22.6% share), British Columbia (115,964, or a 18,3% share), Alberta (46,865, or an 7.4% share) and Manitoba (21,185, or a 3.3% share).

Questions?

Please contact the Research, Measurement and Data Analytics Section at research@canadacouncil.ca.