Economic importance of culture and sport in Canada

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4.1 Culture in Canada

This section presents the CSA estimates for reference year 2010, first from a product perspective and then from the industry aspect.

Product perspective

From a product perspective, culture accounted for 3.1% of Canada's GDP in 2010.Note 1 Culture GDP at basic prices equaled $47.8 billion. It accounted for 647,300 jobs in 2010, contributing 3.7% to total employment. Culture output totaled $93.2 billion or 3.0% as a share of total economy. Table 7 below summarizes the key findings for culture output, culture GDP and culture jobs.

The largest contributors to culture GDP were: Audio-visual and interactive media ($14.8 billion), Visual and applied arts ($10.2 billion) and Written and published works ($10.0 billion), as shown in Chart 1 and Appendix A Table A.1.

Chart 1 Culture gross domestic product, by domain, Canada, 2010 (product perspective)

Description of Chart 1

Chart 2 illustrates culture GDP by sub-domain. It reveals that the broadcasting sub-domain contributed by far the most to culture GDP at $8.1 billion followed by the film and video sub-domain ($3.4 billion).

Chart 2 Culture gross domestic product, by sub-domain, Canada, 2010 (product perspective)

Description of Chart 2

Industry perspective

Culture industries accounted for 3.2% of the total output in Canada, reaching $99.3 billion in 2010. Table 8 shows the output, GDP and jobs in the culture industries.

GDP of culture industries was $53.2 billion in 2010, contributing 3.4% to Canada's total GDP. Of which culture products accounted for $40.7 billion and other products (i.e., non-culture products) $12.5 billion.

In 2010, the total number of jobs in Canada was 17.3 million. Culture industries accounted for 703,900 jobs, a 4.0% share. This includes jobs associated with the production of culture and non-culture products.

The largest contributors to the GDP of culture industries (presented by domain) were: Audio-visual and interactive media ($13.8 billion) followed by Visual and Applied Arts  ($13.4 billion), Written and published works ($10.1 billion), and Governance, funding and professional support($8.0 billion), as shown in Chart 3 below with additional data available in Appendix A, Table A.2.

Chart 3 Gross domestic product of culture industries, by domain, Canada, 2010 (industry perspective)

Description of Chart 3

Chart 4 below shows the total number of jobs in culture industries in Canada by domain. The largest contributors to jobs to the economy were: Visual and Applied Arts (192,000 jobs) followed by Written and published works (145,900 jobs), Audio-visual and interactive media (117,400 jobs) and Governance, funding and professional support (98,700 jobs).

Chart 4 Jobs in culture industries, Canada, 2010 (industry perspective)

Description of Chart 4

4.2 Sport in Canada

Product perspective

Sport GDP equaled $4.5 billion, contributing 0.3% to Canada's economy in 2010. Output of sport activities totaled $7.2 billion or 0.2%, as a share of total economy. Sport jobs totaled 93,500 in 2010 or (0.5%) of the total jobs in Canada. Table 9 summarizes the key findings for sport output, sport GDP and sport jobs (product perspective).

The largest contributors to sport GDP were: Organized sport ($1.9 billion) and Education and training ($1.4 billion), as shown below in Chart 5.

Chart 5 Sport gross domestic product, by domain, Canada, 2010 (product perspective)

Description of Chart 5

Industry perspective

GDP of sport industries was $5.2 billion in 2010, contributing 0.3% to Canada's total GDP. Of this, 85.4% is attributable to the production of sport products within the sport industries (refer to Appendix A.2).

Sport industries formed $8.3 billion of the total production in Canada. Of this, sports products accounted for $7.1 billion and other products (i.e., non-sport products) $1.2 billion. Table 10 summarizes the key findings for sport output, sport GDP and sport jobs (industry perspective).

Sport industries accounted for 105,200 jobs, a 0.6% share of the total economy. Almost 90% (93,200) of the jobs in sport industries are sport jobs, but the sport industries also contribute non-sport jobs (12,000 jobs) to the economy.

The largest contributors to GDP of sport industries were: Organized sport with $2.0 billion and Education and training with $1.7 billion, as shown in Chart 6 below.

Chart 6 Gross domestic product of sport industries, by sub-domain, Canada, 2010 (industry perspective)

Description of Chart 6

The largest contributors to jobs in sport industries were: Organized sport with 57,400 jobs and Education and training with 28,500 jobs, as shown below in Chart 7.

Chart 7 Jobs in sport industries, Canada, 2010 (industry perspective)

Description of Chart 7

4.3 Culture position in the Canadian economy

In order to understand the importance of the Culture Industry in the Canadian economy, it is advantageous to compare the industry's performance against that of other industries. Chart 8 shows the GDP of various industries compared to the GDP of the culture industry.

Chart 8 Gross domestic product, by selected industries, Canada, 2010

Description of Chart 8

At $47.8 billion, the culture industry's contribution to Canadian GDP is larger than that of the Utilities, or Accommodation industries which amounted to $35 billion and $32 billion respectively. Culture industry's contribution was more than double that of the Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting industry, which equaled $23 billion.

Note

  1. The Culture Satellite account measures only the direct effects of culture as opposed to indirect and induced effects.
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