The key question that I investigate this week is: In which Canadian provinces and territories did the cultural economy increase or decrease between 2010 and 2020? I’ll also look at pre-pandemic changes, i.e., 2010 to 2019. The analysis follows last week’s post related to pandemic-specific changes (2019 to 2020 only).

Data for the most recent year (2020) of Statistics Canada’s Provincial and Territorial Culture Indicators were released on June 2, and 2010 is the first year of comparable data.

This post highlights two measures of longer-term changes in the economic impacts of the arts, culture, and heritage:

• Gross Domestic Product (GDP, or direct economic impact, a measure of net value-added to the economy). The GDP statistics have been adjusted for inflation and population growth to provide an estimate of real per capita growth or decline.

• Jobs (including both full-time and part-time positions, not on a full-time-equivalent basis)

“Arts, culture, and heritage” includes (in descending order of GDP impact in Canada in 2020):

• audiovisual and interactive media

• visual and applied arts

• government-owned cultural institutions (which are excluded from other areas)

• written and published works

• live performance

• heritage and libraries

• sound recording

• education and training

Almost all the statistics in this post have been adjusted for both inflation and population growth in each province and territory. These are sometimes referred to as real per capita changes. The inflation adjustments are based on estimates of changes in the Consumer Price Index in each province and in the capitals of the three territories. Like population changes, the inflation adjustments vary between jurisdictions.

See the notes at the end of this post for further explanations and definitions.

In Canada, longer-term changes in the direct impact of the arts, culture, and heritage between 2010 and 2020 included:

• An 8% decrease in impact on GDP after adjusting for inflation and population growth. (This was a 21% increase before the inflation and population adjustments, which shows how significant the adjustments are over the full timeframe.) The entire GDP decrease came in the first year of the pandemic: there was essentially no change between 2010 and 2019 (-0.1%), but there was an 8% drop in 2020 (adjusted for inflation and population growth).

• A 4% decrease in cultural jobs: As was the case with GDP, the reduction in jobs came in 2020 (-11%), negating an 8% increase between 2010 and 2019.

This post explores the similarities and differences in these changes across the country.