Canadian business patterns data provide counts of active establishments by industry classification and employment size categories. The data are compiled from the Business Register, which is a repository of information on the Canadian business population.
Included in the Business Register are all Canadian businesses which meet at least one of the three following criteria:
- Have an employee workforce for which they submit payroll remittances to CRA; or
- Have a minimum of $30,000 in annual revenue; or
- Are incorporated under a federal or provincial act and have filed a federal corporate income tax form within the past three years.
For further information on "establishments" and "locations", see Page 8 of this Statistics Canada guide.
Statistics Canada advises users not to use these data as a time series. Changes to the Business Register’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. To view recent methodological changes, please refer to the Data variations caused by methodological changes, by year.
Take note that the file Dec14CDCSD_est.ivt uses the numeric geographic code as the default Label for the Geography dimension. You can change the label to view the name of the geographies by selecting the 'Next Label' button at the top of the screen while the Geography dimension is selected.