In 2023, Canadian exports and imports of culture and sport products grew. Trade in most culture and sport goods and services recovered to levels seen before the COVID-19 pandemic, following sharp declines in 2020. The United States continued to be Canada's largest trading partner in culture and sport products in 2023, accounting for 64.4% of exports and 61.6% of imports.
Total exports of culture and sport products grew 3.3% to reach $29.2 billion in 2023, representing 3.0% of Canada's total exports in the year. This growth followed a 9.0% increase in 2022.
The trade deficit, measured as the difference between imports and exports of culture and sport products, widened in 2023, as imports outpaced exports. Total imports of culture and sport products increased 6.0% to $38.4 billion after growing 15.0% in 2022. Imports of culture and sport products represented 3.9% of economy-wide imports in 2023.
International trade of culture products up in 2023
Canada exported $27.1 billion of culture products in 2023, up 1.3% from the previous year, led by increased exports in the domains of education and training, audio-visual and interactive media, and live performance. The exports of heritage and libraries exceeded pre-pandemic levels, leaving live performance as the only domain to remain below pre-pandemic levels, despite a 23.9% increase from 2022. This highlights the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on Canada's culture products, as live performance is almost entirely an in-person experience.
Meanwhile, imports of culture products increased 4.4% in 2023, reaching $35.8 billion, led by the audio-visual and interactive media domain and the live performance domain. At the subdomain level, design, performing arts and broadcasting drove the increase.
Overall, culture products accounted for 2.8% of all goods and services exports and 3.7% of total imports in 2023.
Chart 1: International trade of culture products, by domain, 2023
Description - Chart 1
Data table: International trade of culture products, by domain, 2023
1. Government-owned or -operated institutions (except schools, colleges and universities) are part of the governance, funding and professional support domain, even if their activity falls within the scope of one of the other subdomains. For example, a government-operated library would be included under the governance, funding and professional support (culture) domain and not under the libraries subdomain.
2. The heritage and libraries domain includes only private institutions. All government-owned or -operated institutions (federal, provincial or municipal) are included in the governance, funding and professional support (culture) domain.
3. The multi domain includes culture industries that are associated with more than one culture domain: the culture portion of convention and trade show organizers; manufacturing and reproducing unrecorded media; lessors of non-financial intangible assets (except copyrighted works); Internet broadcasting and web search portal industries. These culture industries are all linked to more than one culture domain but cannot be easily allocated to a single domain. Therefore, they have been aggregated. As of 2017, publishers publishing exclusively on the Internet were moved from the multi domain to their associated subdomain within written and published works.
Source: Table 12-10-0117-01.
Trade of sport products surpasses pre-pandemic levels
In 2023, Canadian exports of total sport products reached $2.2 billion (+$580.0 million), surpassing the pre-pandemic level of 2019. Growth was seen in all four sport domains in 2023, led by education and training (+$220.8 million), governance, funding and professional support (+$211.0 million) and organized sport (+$148.0 million). The sport governance, funding and professional support domain includes fees for the use of public recreational facilities, such as skating rinks and swimming pools.
Canadian imports of total sport products also exceeded pre-pandemic levels, reaching $2.6 billion (+$651.4 million) in 2023. Growth was seen in all domains, led by governance, funding and professional support (+$431.1 million) and organized sport (+$220.0 million).
Chart 2: International trade of sport products, by subdomain, 2023
Description - Chart 2
Data table: International trade of sport products, by subdomain, 2023
1. Government-owned or -operated institutions (except schools, colleges and universities) are part of the governance, funding and professional support (sport) subdomain, even if their activity falls within the scope of one of the other subdomains. For example, a government-operated pool would be included under the governance, funding and professional support (sport) subdomain and not under the informal sport subdomain.
Source: Table 12-10-0117-01.
Global trade of culture and sport products
Despite being Canada's largest trading partner, the United States continued to represent a declining share of Canada's total exports of culture and sport products (-2.9 percentage points) and Canada's total imports of culture and sport products (-2.0 percentage points) in 2023. Meanwhile, India (+1.2 percentage points) had an increased share of Canada's total exports of culture and sport products. The share of imports of culture and sport products from the European Union increased by 0.2 percentage points.
Interprovincial and territorial trade of culture and sport products in 2021
Trade between the provinces and territories continued to play a key role in the Canadian economy. In 2021, interprovincial and territorial trade in culture products amounted to $15.2 billion, up 6.9%, as pandemic-related restrictions began to ease. The audio-visual and interactive media domain continued to be the largest contributor to interprovincial and territorial trade, particularly in the broadcasting subdomain.
Interprovincial and territorial trade of sport products also began to recover, rising 25.5% from 2020 to total $783.1 million in 2021. All sport subdomains increased in 2021, but governance, funding and professional support and organized sport remained well below pre-pandemic levels, as restrictions were not fully lifted.
Interprovincial and territorial trade (exports and imports) of culture and sport products is estimated using the latest available supply and use tables, which are for the 2021 reference year.
Note to readers
The Trade of Culture and Sport Products (TCSP) provides measures of the international and interprovincial trade of goods and services attributed to both culture and sport (inclusive of the arts and heritage).
All estimates of international trade are recorded or converted to Canadian dollars using daily or monthly average exchange rates.
Culture products are goods and services produced from creative artistic activity or from the preservation of heritage.
Sport products include goods and services related to recreational sports and physical activities, and professional, semi-professional and amateur sport clubs and independent athletes that are primarily engaged in presenting sporting events before an audience. The classification excludes goods and services that are inputs for producing sport products such as equipment, but it includes merchandise sold at sporting events.
Because of data availability, interprovincial and territorial trade data can only be derived up until 2021, as they are based on published supply and use tables (SUTs).
Unless otherwise stated, all values are expressed in nominal terms not adjusted for seasonality.
Revisions
This release of the TCSP for the 2023 reference year includes revised estimates back to 2021. The estimates incorporate new and revised data, as well as updates and methodological changes stemming from the 2023 Provincial and Territorial Culture Indicators (PTCI).
Annually, estimates for the previous two years are subject to revision. These revisions allow for newly published SUTs, customs-based merchandise trade data and balance-of-payments-based trade data to be incorporated into the time series.
Approximately every three years, the TCSP data will be updated according to revisions in the Provincial and Territorial Culture Satellite Account and the PTCI. This will permit new culture and sport ratios to be incorporated into the TCSP estimates.
Contact information
For more information, or to enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact us (toll-free 1-800-263-1136; 514-283-8300; infostats@statcan.gc.ca) or Media Relations (statcan.mediahotline-ligneinfomedias.statcan@statcan.gc.ca).