Introduction

The Canadian Transportation Economic Accounts (CTEA) are a means of expanding the analytical capacity of the Canadian National Economic Accounts (NEA). As a supplement to the supply and use table (SUT) component of the NEA, the CTEA provide a comprehensive measure of both own-account and for-hire transportation services. They reorganize information in a way that is consistent with the SUT framework and respects the same identities and classifications. At the same time, they provide an analytical focus specifically on transportation.

The core SUTs measure only for-hire transportation services provided on a fee basis by transportation industries (i.e., industries whose primary output is transportation services). They do not explicitly measure own-account transportation services (OATS) produced by non-transportation industries (i.e., industries that do not have transportation as their primary output) to support their internal business activities. The Canadian SUTs treat OATS as an ancillary activity of non-transportation industries and embed the related inputs in the cost of producing non-transportation outputs.

Non-transportation industries commonly buy or lease vehicles, hire vehicle operators and move goods and personnel without purchasing these transportation services from a transportation industry enterprise. For instance, a large-scale manufacturing establishment could decide that using its own vehicles and drivers to move inputs between plants would be more cost-effective than hiring a trucking company. In this way, the manufacturer produces a transportation service for its own consumption, referred to as an “own-account” transportation service. This own-account transportation activity does not show up in the manufacturing industry’s output, since it is not a market output. Hence, it is implicitly embedded in the industry’s expenses. The same is true for all enterprises that do not have transportation as their primary output and that produce transportation services for their own use (e.g., construction, mining and wholesale). As such, a large portion of transportation activity taking place in the economy is not directly observable in the SUTs. Transportation economic accounts can be used to make this implicit transportation activity observable.

The CTEA treat OATS as separate industries with outputs equal to the sum of OATS-related intermediate consumption and value added (i.e., compensation of employees, other taxes less subsidies on production, gross mixed income and gross operating surplus). The CTEA thus provide a framework within the SUTs for conducting studies on the role of total transportation in the economy, such as its contribution to Canadian gross domestic product (GDP), environmental footprints and infrastructure needs, as well as on the intensity of use of transportation services by non-transportation industries.

The Canadian SUTs break down transportation into the following 13 industries:

• air transportation
• rail transportation
• water transportation
• truck transportation
• urban transit systems
• other transit and ground passenger transportation and scenic and sightseeing transportation
• taxi and limousine service
• crude oil and other pipeline transportation
• pipeline transportation of natural gas
• support activities for transportation
• postal service
• couriers and messengers
• warehousing and storage

The CTEA present each mode of own-account transportation as a separate industry. As such, they introduce four new OATS industries into the SUTs-one for each of the four primary modes of transportation (i.e., air, rail, water and truck). Each of these new OATS industries produces one output: its corresponding own-account transportation product.

Inputs, both intermediate and value-added, used in the production of OATS by non-transportation industries are transferred to these newly created OATS industries. They are replaced in equal amount with the outputs of the OATS industries. Once this is done, the new OATS industries by mode explicitly capture the OATS activities of the relevant non-transportation industries.

This SUT rearrangement results in an increase in the total output, equal to the output produced by the newly created OATS industries. However, this additional output does not change the economy-wide GDP, because the value added by OATS is already accounted for in the SUTs of the relevant non-transportation industries. The CTEA merely reclassify the OATS portion of the value added by the non-transportation industries to the newly created OATS industries.