Foreign Affiliate Statistics

With Canadian companies increasingly engaged in the global economy, there is a growing demand for more detailed information on their international activities. As Canadian businesses expand their activities across national borders and foreign businesses expand their activities in Canada, both through foreign direct investment, this leads to a number of policy related challenges on issues such as outsourcing jobs, competitiveness and export performance, and how these relate to foreign affiliate sales. Foreign affiliate statistics can shed light on these issues by going beyond the traditional realm of cross-border foreign investment statistics to articulate the activities and financial positions of Canadian majority-owned affiliates operating abroad, or foreign majority-owned affiliates operating in Canada.

Foreign affiliate statistics are an extension of statistics on foreign direct investment. They provide additional insight into foreign direct investment on economic agents in national economies, in terms of earnings, productivity, employment, trade and foreign exposures resulting from an inter-connected and integrated global economy.

There are two types of foreign affiliate statistics—activities of foreign majority-owned affiliates in Canada and activities of Canadian majority-owned affiliates abroad.