Census Metropolitan Areas as Culture Clusters

by David Coish, Trends and Conditions in Census Metropolitan Areas, October 2004, Catalogue No. 89-613 No. 4

Context

This report is the fourth in a series that develops statistical measures to shed light on important issues for Canada's cities. Statistics Canada has worked on this project in collaboration with the Cities Secretariat, Infrastructure Canada. Canadian Heritage has provided funding for this particular report.

The objective is to provide statistical measures of trends and conditions in our larger urban areas and the neighbourhoods within them. These measures will be available for use in city planning and in policy development.

Objective(s)

This report paints a statistical portrait of culture in Canada's 27 census metropolitan areas. It examines the culture labour force in these centres, culture programs in universities and colleges and the output of culture firms and organizations. It shows which metropolitan areas are clusters of culture, that is, those that have large concentrations of culture workers, students and firms.

In addition, it examines characteristics of culture workers, and their differences across metropolitan areas based on age, gender, visible minority status, Aboriginal status, education level and several other variables.

Findings

Almost 600,000 Canadians worked in culture industries in 2001 and over one-half of them were located in just three metropolitan centres: Toronto, Montréal and Vancouver. However, other urban areas formed smaller, but important "culture clusters,".

Of these culture industry workers, 80% resided in one of the nation's 27 census metropolitan areas and 51% resided in Toronto, Montréal and Vancouver. About one-third of Canada's total labour force was located in these three centres.

Toronto alone had an estimated 154,000 culture industry workers in 2001, followed by Montréal (97,800) and Vancouver (54,500).

Toronto was the nation's dominant force for culture industries, particularly from the point of view of earned revenues. It had a large cultural work force involved in industries such as advertising, printing, motion picture and video industries, publishing and specialized design services.

Montréal formed the second largest bastion of culture in terms of wages and earned revenue for most culture industries, but it led on all measures for the performing arts. It also had more firms than Toronto in several culture industries, including film production, performing arts, book publishing and sound recording.

Other metropolitan areas formed smaller, but notable, "culture clusters." These included Vancouver and, to a lesser extent, Halifax, for domestic film production. Vancouver, Ottawa–Hull and Winnipeg earned sizeable shares of performing arts revenues, and St. Catharines–Niagara had the highest per capita revenues.

Data source(s)

Data came primarily from the 2001 Census, as well as from Statistics Canada's Culture Statistics Program and the Centre for Education Statistics.

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