Understanding Canadian Data Sets

Let me add two other questions for answering: (4)Several of these provinces have large retail "exports." Is the best interpretation that there are retail sales to tourists (i.e., nonlocals)? (5) Also, and related to the question above, there large exports in municipal services. How should I think about those? As contributions to regional governance? Very confusing! Thanks

Hello Michael, Thank you for your questions. We are currently discussing them and intend to provide a detailed response soon. Regards, IMPLAN Staff

Hello Mr. Shuman, Question 1: Unlike US data sets, the Canadian data set does not include give provincial final demand in the overview of the model. Does that mean that everything just appears in sectors 96 to 102, the various public service sectors? If so, I'm curious why this approach was taken, compared to the U.S. models (where local/state government demand is treated as an "institutional" demand).   Answer: The source data from StatCan does not provide multiple government consumption final demand sectors. That is, federal and state/local government consumption are lumped together. IMPLAN hasn’t found any data that would sufficiently allow for the disaggregation of the levels of government expenditures. The interpretation of not that state/local spending is non-existent, but that the “federal” government final demand contains both federal and state/local expenditures. This is inherited from source data. Question 2: Are "indirect business taxes" from events provincial taxes, local taxes, or both? Or neither? I'd welcome any elaboration.   Answer: IBT (or TOPI) exists at each level (local, provincial, and federal). However, since there is a single government final demand sector, all of the TOPI payments are rolled together. Thus, Industry pay state/local and federal TOPI as a single payment to a TOPI row of the SAM, then the TOPI column of the SAM pays everything to the single government spending account row. Thus, the difference between a TOPI payment to local gov’t and TOPI payments to federal gov’t are not specified in the IMPLAN software. This is also an inherited trait from source data.   Question 3: How should I think about leaks in sector 102, which is "other municipal services." For example, in Newfoundland, the regional purchasing coefficient (RPC) is 0.42. My understanding is that the RPC shows how much of “total gross demand” in a region is currently met by local industry. Wouldn't government services naturally have an RPC of 1 -- that is, their demand is met by the local government. Or am I misinterpreting?   Answer: There are a few things at play here. First, the Canadian energy sector is largely owned and operated by the Canadian government. Second, Canada produces a large amount of its energy via hydroelectric plants which produces a regionality to the distribution systems that doesn’t always align well with provincial lines. Third, the source data was provided as an Industry-by-Industry (IxI) Input-Output structure which means that there is no commodity level data supporting these industries; further, that one should not think of “other municipal government services” as a commodity but rather as an industry.   The end result of all of these little issues is that the leakage in sector 102 appears to be a very real inter-provincial trade of energy. That is, the government sector owns the production of hydroelectric energy. This energy is distributed across provincial lines which count as a provincial export from the ‘other municipal government services’ sector. Since sector 102 is an industry (not a commodity) those payments are made to sector 102 not to the hydroelectric power production industry. This has been confirmed through the newer Supply and Use Tables available through StatCan. If you open the supply table, a significant amount of the ‘other municipal government services’ is producing ‘Utilities’ commodities (which is where energy would be). If you then check out the inter-provincial trade data (also published by StatCan), you can see that there is a significant amount of the ‘utilities’ commodities being traded between provinces. At a glance, the amounts of these transfers seem to align with estimates in the IMPLAN models.   This confluence of events is leading to the estimates of actual exportation of commodities made by the ‘other municipal government’ sector. The other government sectors will have some of the same issues, but the amounts will differ based on the geography in question and what type of governmental district it resides in (as well as the governmental district that it is trading with).   Question 4: Several of these provinces have large retail "exports." Is the best interpretation that there are retail sales to tourists (i.e., nonlocals)?   Answer: It appears that this is the best interpretation, yes.   Question 5: Also, and related to the question above, there large exports in municipal services. How should I think about those? As contributions to regional governance? Very confusing!   Answer: Please see my answer to (Question 3). Regards, IMPLAN Staff