Notice to users

This publication presents information about Canada’s National Income and Expenditure Accounts (IEA). These accounts portray the evolution of the Canadian economy on a quarterly basis. They record the components of income and expenditure, saving and investment, and borrowing and lending of each of four broad sectors of the economy: (i) persons and unincorporated businesses, (ii) corporate and government business enterprises, (iii) government and (iv) non-residents. The sum of the final (non-transfer) income or the final (nonintermediate) expenditure of all domestic sectors equals gross domestic product at market prices, the market value of total production in Canada.

The sectoral structure of these accounts can best be explained through an example. Consider the corporate and government business enterprises sector. Corporations receive income in the form of profits, other investment income and capital assistance from government. They pay out part of that income as interest and dividends, direct taxes or other transfers such as charitable donations, and save the remainder. Corporations also invest in plant, equipment and inventories. To the extent their investment exceeds or falls short of their saving, they either borrow from or lend to other sectors in the form of financial transactions. The net borrowing or lending of a sector is also the difference between financial asset acquisition (bank deposits, purchase of bonds, purchase of equity and so on) and liability acquisition (bank borrowing, bond sales, equity financing and so on). The system as a whole, then, provides two equivalent measures of net lending by sector, which differ somewhat due to statistical errors. The sum of net lending by all sectors must be zero.

Financial transactions are expanded in the Financial Flow Accounts (FFA). The FFA show the details of the financing of economic activity, as well as the economy-wide intermediation of funds, in considerable detail (covering 30 institutional sectors).

Documentation

The concepts, sources and methods of the IEA and FFA are described in the following publications:

A User Guide to the Canadian System of National Accounts, Catalogue No. 13-589-XPE.

Guide to the Income and Expenditure Accounts, Catalogue No. 13-017-X.

A Guide to the Financial Flow and National Balance Sheet Accounts, Catalogue No. 13-585-XPE.

Additional explanations can be found in the technical papers included from time to time in the national accounts publications. A list of previously published papers follows.