How Does BC’s Culture Economy Compare to the Rest of Canada? Annual Report Sheds Light

Image courtesy of the Provincial and Territorial Culture Indicators, 2016.

Earlier this week, the Culture Satellite Account released the Provincial and Territorial Culture Indicators, which measures the economic importance of culture and sport, province by province, to the Canadian economy.

The report, which covers the year 2016, begins with country-wide statistics. These indicate that culture and sports contributed $60.3 billion to Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP). Culture GDP alone comprises $53.8 billion and represents 2.8% of Canada’s overall GDP. Culture revenue increased 1.5% from the previous year, while economy-wide gross domestic product increased 1.8%. Sport GDP rose 3.2% in 2016 to $6.5 billion, representing 0.3% of the total economy.   

Homing in on British Columbia: some good news. BC's culture GDP saw the largest gain from the previous year of all the provinces, growing 3.9% for a total of $7.2 billion (by comparison, Ontario’s culture GDP, the highest at $25.7 billion, rose 1.4%). 

There were 98,244 culture jobs in BC in 2016, an increase by 7.1% over the previous year — the highest rise of all the provinces, and significantly higher than BC's economy-wide job increase of 4.1%.  

BC’s sport GDP comes in at $1.2 billion, which represents a 4.1% gain from the previous year. 2016 saw 21,766 sports jobs in BC, a 10.7% increase from 2015. 

The entire report offers much to consider, such as which cultural domain earned the most revenue — film, video and interactive media — and which domain GDP decreased the most —written and published works. Click here to read the full report.