Presentation of the infrastructure economic accounts

The infrastructure economic accounts are a series of statistical statements which portray the role of infrastructure in the Canadian economy. The economic accounts will not encompass all assets within the economy, only those that form the infrastructure definition. Since the statistical framework borrows heavily from the 2008 SNA, the resulting statistical statements will take the same shape as the Canadian macroeconomic accounts published by Statistics Canada. The accounts will include a production account, income and expenditure account, financial account, wealth account, labour productivity account, as well as supplementary estimates relating to the use by purpose.

The production account and income accounts will show the direct and indirect gross value added resulting from infrastructure work-put-in-place by the producing industry. The following represents a stylized example of the Infrastructure production account. Key measures associated with the production account include a measure of gross value added for industries that contributed directly or indirectly to the production of infrastructure, and the associated value added components including the gross operating surplus, compensation of employees and the number of direct and indirect employment.

The expenditure account will link the production to the final expenditure or the ‘consuming’ sector. This statement will present infrastructure spending by the sector/industry that made the investment. The key measures associated with the expenditure account include infrastructure investment by sector (business, government and NPISH) and any imports or exports of infrastructure.

One of the most important sets of tables in the infrastructure accounts are the financial and wealth tables. These tables present information related to the stock of Canada’s infrastructure. These tables will provide an estimate of the value of the stock of infrastructure as well as the change in value from one period to another. Key measures included in this table include infrastructure wealth, consumption of fixed capital (or depreciation), price change associated with existing infrastructure, and volume changes related to destructions and disposal.

In addition to the table above, Statistics Canada can leverage recent work that has been undertaken to estimate the remaining useful life of Canada’s capital stock. Given that Statistics Canada records the flow of investment and has an estimate of service lives by asset, it is possible to develop measures and indicators related to the economic useful life of the stock of infrastructure. Key measures included in this “account” include measures of the expected useful economic life of infrastructure as well as the remaining useful life of the stock of infrastructure.

The infrastructure labour account will focus on both the jobs related to infrastructure as well as the use of infrastructure by the different sectors of the economy. Estimates of jobs and earnings will be derived for infrastructure industries. The possibility of using this information, along with information from the labour force survey and census of population, to breakdown the data by occupation allows for the possibility of an enhanced dataset as shown in the following table.

Investment in infrastructure can also be presented by function. For example, $100 million in government spending can be distributed to show how much of the $100 million was directed to health care, housing, and security. The infrastructure economic and social accounts will be able to take government capital spending and identify how much of the spending is directed to health, education, security along with 9 other functional groups.