Statistical insights on the arts

Statistical insights on the arts

Provincial analysis of consumer spending on the arts, culture, and heritage in 2023

Similarities and differences in spending on culture and the arts

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Hill Strategies (Kelly Hill)
Oct 07, 2025
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Today’s article examines household spending on cultural goods and services in each province 2023. Like a lot of data on culture, the context regarding today’s dataset is tricky. Given the limitations of Statistics Canada’s Survey of Household Spending, I would consider the resulting analysis to be a reasonable approximation of consumer spending on the arts, culture, and heritage. The good news is that the estimates of spending on cultural items should be as accurate as estimates for any other items in the survey.

Please refer to the notes at the end of the article for important methods and limitations.

A note about timing: I have shifted this week’s article to Thursday to honour Truth and Reconciliation Day. Next week’s article will also be on Thursday, and the following week’s one will be on Wednesday. Both of those shifts are due to the timing of special projects that are the subject of the articles.

Today’s focus is on the following key indicators for each province:

  • Average spending on the arts, culture, and heritage per household

  • Total consumer spending on the arts, culture, and heritage (which equals the average spending per household reported in the survey, multiplied by the number of households in 2023)

  • Average spending on artworks and arts participation (a limited but reasonable approximation of spending on the arts)

  • Total consumer spending on artworks and arts participation

Spending details for all 19 items included in cultural spending are not provided for each province, due to space and time limitations. The 19 cultural goods and services are listed at the end of this article.

For some cultural spending items in some provinces, the data were not reliable and were therefore missing from the dataset. In those cases, I imputed the values for the missing data by substituting either national data (in most cases) or regional data (where available). The imputed data represent around 12% of total spending on culture in the provinces, with a low of 7% in Ontario and a high of 16% in PEI. The only arts item that was imputed is art and craft materials, which was imputed from national data in nine of the ten provinces.


Recap: Canadian households’ spending on culture in 2023

As I noted last week, Canadians spent an average of $1,623 per household on cultural goods and services in 2023, for a total of $27 billion. This represents 2.1% of total consumer spending in the country (after taxes, pension contributions, and gifts are excluded).

Canadian households spent an average of $531 on artworks and arts participation items, for a total of $8.8 billion. My category for “artworks and arts participation items” includes six items: 1) works of art, carvings, and other decorative ware; 2) books; 3) tickets to live performances; 4) movie tickets; 5) admissions to museums, zoos, and other heritage sites; and 6) art and craft materials.


Provincial comparisons of household spending on the arts, culture, and heritage

Average spending on cultural goods and services per household

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