Gross Domestic Product QoQ

Canadian GDP (gross domestic product, the total unduplicated value of goods and services) covers all production inside Canada under 2008 System of National Accounts rules. It records 6 sectors: households, nonprofits serving households, governments, financial corporations, non-financial corporations and nonresidents through trade and income flows.

The headline is real (price-adjusted volume) expenditure growth, while income-side growth rates are nominal (current prices, not price-adjusted). It is not monthly GDP by industry (a separate value-added program), national income (GDP plus net foreign income), or welfare per person.

Statistics Canada (StatCan, the statistical agency) releases it in The Daily (the official 8:30 a.m. Eastern weekday bulletin) about 60 days after quarter end. Q1 lands in late May, Q2 in late August, Q3 in late November and Q4 in late February or early March.

Releases add income and real spending accounts, deflator (nominal divided by real), terms of trade (export prices over import prices) and saving rate. Revisions follow fixed rules: Q1 revises the prior year, Q2 revises Q1, Q3 revises 3 prior years and Q4 revises the current year.

Real spending growth moves with household demand, public spending, investment, stockbuilding and net trade.

• Personal expenditure, close to 60%: household final consumption of goods and services.
• Government consumption: public spending on goods and services.
• Fixed investment: government and business spending on structures, machinery, equipment, intellectual property (software, exploration and similar assets) and homes.
• Inventories (stockbuilding): change in business, farm and government stocks, excluding gold stores of value.
• Net exports: exports minus imports, the external-balance contribution.

In Q2 2024, released August 30, 2024, real GDP rose 0.5% after 0.4% in Q1, while per-person output fell 0.1% for a 5th straight quarter. Government consumption rose 1.5% and machinery investment rose 6.5% on aircraft and transport gear, offsetting weak household spending at 0.2%. Housing investment fell 1.9% and exports of goods and services fell 0.4% while imports edged down 0.1%, dragging headline growth. The same release showed the price deflator up 1.1% and the saving rate at 7.2%, so a positive quarter can still leave households feeling poorer.

1. Compile: build income totals (wages, profits, other returns) and spending totals (consumption, investment, stockbuilding, net trade) by sector and check consistency.
2. Split the gap: income and spending totals almost never match, so add 50% of the statistical discrepancy (measurement gap) to each side.
3. Benchmark: align annual estimates to supply-use tables (the full product-by-product balance of supply and uses).

1. Deflate with chain Fisher: combine Laspeyres (past-price weights) and Paasche (current-price weights) links into a Fisher link, then chain links over time. Example: Laspeyres 1.0060 and Paasche 1.0040 give Fisher square root at about 1.0050. So 100.0 becomes 100.50 for 0.5% growth and about 2.0% annualized.
2. Seasonally adjust and publish: remove regular seasonal patterns with X-11-ARIMA (a seasonal filter) at fine detail and sum to totals. Then publish levels at annual rates (quarterly level x 4) with quarterly, annualized (compounded yearly) and year-over-year (quarter versus same quarter prior year) growth.