Overview

Infrastructure is an important part of the Canadian economic and social landscape. It plays a significant role in Canada’s economic growth and provides all Canadians with services that enhance their well-being. Given its importance, policymakers, researchers, businesses and households require comprehensive and timely statistics in order to assess the evolution, structure, role and state of Canada’s infrastructure and the impact it has on the economy, society and the environment.

Statistics Canada currently produces a wealth of information related to Canada’s infrastructure. Statistics related to the use, production, stock, investment, and depreciation can be found among many of the statistical products released by the agency. While a significant amount of data exists, the data are often too aggregated to provide a clear picture of the role and importance of infrastructure to the Canadian economy and society.

The infrastructure economic accounts represents a set of statistical statements that record the economic, social and environmental impacts related to the production and use of infrastructure in Canada and each province and territory. The infrastructure economic accounts are organized using a statistical framework that outlines the concepts, classification systems and methods required to construct the accounts. This statistical framework is consistent with the Canadian system of national accounts, Canadian government finance statistics and Canada’s balance of payments. This consistency permits users to analyze the infrastructure related statistical statements in the context of economy wide measures such as investment, gross domestic product (GDP), national income and wealth.

The focus of this guide relates to the sources and methods used to develop the infrastructure economic accounts. The guide to Canada’s infrastructure economic accounts sources and methods is presented in three parts. The first section outlines the general concepts, definitions and classifications applicable to the account. The second section examines the methods used to construct the economic accounts. The final section outlines how the information will be presented. Over time, the accounts will be expanded to include social and environmental components, once that methodology is fully developed, they will be integrated in a future release of this guide.

The foundation of the infrastructure statistical framework is the System of National Accounts, 2008 (2008 SNA), an internationally recognized framework used to measure economic activity within a country or region. The framework is used by countries throughout the world to record their production, incomes, investment, consumption, financial transactions and stocks of non-financial assets and financial assets as well as their liabilities. The data are organized into a sequence of accounts that articulate the change in wealth from one period to another by tracing the activities of economic agents (households, governments, corporations). The 2008 SNA outlines the concepts, definitions, classifications and accounting rules for compiling and integrating data to give a comprehensive picture of the economy and how it works. Key measures that emerge from this framework include GDP, household disposable income, investment, capital stock, productivity, the international balance of payments and government debt. For the most part, the infrastructure statistical framework inherits the concepts and classifications directly from the 2008 SNA.

Using the 2008 SNA as the foundation for an infrastructure statistical framework has four main benefits.

1. First, it is an internationally recognized framework and therefore any of the information produced as part of a set of Canadian infrastructure accounts is directly comparable to not only the Canadian national accounts and social statistics but the national accounts and social statistics of most other economies (such as the United States, United Kingdom and Australia).
2. Second, the data contained within the Canadian national accounts are some of the highest quality data produced and released by Statistics Canada. A large network of data is used to construct these statistics. These data are the starting point in the construction of the infrastructure economic and social accounts. The data have already gone through data quality validation and coherence analysis in the measurement of the core macroeconomic accounts and have been further integrated, reconciled and balanced in the process of producing the accounts. This ensures that the data underlying the infrastructure accounts are equivalent in quality to Canada’s core macroeconomic accounts.
3. Third, the framework covers the broad range of economic and social activities that are of interest in order to understand the role of infrastructure within the Canadian economy, society and environment including the production, use and ownership of infrastructure, and the resulting stock.
4. Finally, a set of infrastructure economic and social accounts also provides clarity for users. The accounts define infrastructure and ensure that data users are all starting from the same vantage point and are ‘speaking the same language’ when it comes to analysis related to infrastructure use, spending, investment and stock of infrastructure in Canada.