Activities of Canadian Majority-Owned Affiliates Abroad

Detailed information for 2013

Status:

Active

Frequency:

Annual

Record number:

1539

This survey measures the sales of goods and services, employment levels, and the assets and liabilities of Canadian majority-owned foreign affiliates abroad.

Data release - December 8, 2015

Description

This survey measures the sales of goods and services, employment levels and the assets and liabilities of Canadian majority-owned foreign affiliates (MOFAs) abroad.

Selling goods or services through MOFAs is a means for Canadian companies to market their products internationally. In the case of goods, the products sold by majority-owned foreign affiliates may be produced in Canada or produced abroad.

Data related to MOFAs is needed to negotiate and monitor trade and investment agreements. The data is also needed to meet Canada's statistical obligations to supranational organizations, such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Reference period: Calendar year

Collection period: The collection period is generally from April to November of the year after the reference period.

Subjects

  • Economic accounts

Data sources and methodology

Target population

The universe for this survey is comprised of foreign affiliates abroad that are majority-owned (i.e. more than 50% of the voting shares) by a business that resides in Canada.

In order to be consistent with the international practice for measuring foreign affiliate trade statistics, only the data for majority-owned foreign affiliates (MOFAs) are included. Sales and employment figures of MOFAs are fully attributed; there is no adjustment for less than 100% ownership.

Instrument design

The questionnaire BP-CIA (Canadian Investments Abroad), which is used to collect data on Foreign Direct Investment Abroad, incorporates specific questions for compiling the data on Canada's majority-owned foreign affiliate statistics.

The survey was last redesigned in 2011 and went through extensive testing through the Questionnaire Design and Research Centre. Field testing with respondents was also conducted.

Sampling

The BP-CIA questionnaire, which contains some questions pertaining to majority-owned foreign affiliates (MOFAs) as well as other questions about Canadian investment abroad, is sent to Canadian enterprises known to have or believed to have a direct investment relationship (i.e. 10% or more of the voting equity or equivalent) in one or more non-resident corporations, partnerships or joint ventures. For the statistics on MOFAs, only the majority-owned foreign affiliates are included. Foreign affiliates that are not majority-owned, but are at least 10% owned by a Canadian enterprise, are included in Canadian direct investment abroad positions nonetheless. See record number 1537 for more information about Canada's international investment position.

For reference year 2013 around 1,300 firms received the BP-CIA questionnaire (Canadian Investment Abroad). This survey is annual and is believed to cover close to 100% of the target population.

Data sources

Responding to this survey is mandatory.

Data are collected directly from survey respondents.

Data are collected annually via questionnaire and response is mandatory for the surveyed entities. The questionnaires are sent out in March of the year following the reference year. Respondents are instructed to send their completed questionnaires to Statistics Canada within four weeks of receipt. Collection of the data is performed by Statistics Canada's Regional Offices. There is also a follow-up of non-response. Data from this questionnaire accounts for 100% of the Canadian majority-owned foreign affiliate statistics estimates.

View the Questionnaire(s) and reporting guide(s) .

Error detection

Following the end of the collection period, the estimates at the regional and industry level are reviewed and any significant changes are investigated and, where appropriate, adjusting corrections are made to the raw data. In addition, various edits with respect to large year-over-year changes in values, invalid country or North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes etc. are put in place and respondents are contacted to verify and correct the data.

Imputation

The imputation process examines the relationship between foreign direct investment and Canadian majority-owned foreign affiliate variables such as sales and employment to impute the missing values. If all the variables for a given record contain missing information, then that unit is considered to be a non-respondent. In this case a re-weighting takes place in order to account for this unit in the estimates.

For some non-responding units that are deemed to be significant in terms of their overall contribution to the estimates (based on either previously reported data or publicly available information), data is researched on a case-by-case basis and estimated largely from information contained in their annual reports, financial statements or websites.

Estimation

The reported values for sampled units are multiplied by a sampling weight in order to provide an estimate for the entire population. The sampling weight is calculated based on certain factors, such as the probability for a unit to be selected in the sample and that responding units will have to represent sampled units that did not respond.

Quality evaluation

Before publishing, the final estimates are compared to the pre-imputation data. Any significant differences are investigated, and if necessary adjustments are made when the imputation or estimation process results are judged to be unacceptable.

Disclosure control

Statistics Canada is prohibited by law from releasing any information it collects that could identify any person, business, or organization, unless consent has been given by the respondent or as permitted by the Statistics Act. Various confidentiality rules are applied to all data that are released or published to prevent the publication or disclosure of any information deemed confidential. If necessary, data are suppressed to prevent direct or residual disclosure of identifiable data.

In order to prevent any data disclosure, confidentiality analysis is done using the Statistics Canada Generalized Disclosure Control System (G-Confid). G-Confid is used for primary suppression (direct disclosure) as well as for secondary suppression (residual disclosure). Direct disclosure occurs when the value in a tabulation cell is composed of or dominated by few enterprises while residual disclosure occurs when confidential information can be derived indirectly by piecing together information from different sources or data series.

Revisions and seasonal adjustment

At the time of publication, data for the two preceding years are subject to revision. The data are not normally revised again except when comprehensive revisions are carried out.

Seasonal adjustment is not applicable to annual data series.

Data accuracy

Non-sampling errors - While considerable effort is made to ensure high standards throughout all stages of collection and processing, the resulting estimates are inevitably subject to a certain degree of non-sampling error. Examples of non-sampling error are coverage error, data response error, non-response error and processing error.

Coverage error can result from incomplete listing and inadequate coverage of the population of Canadian transactors that engage in international direct investment.

Data response error may be due to questionnaire design, the characteristics of a question, inability or unwillingness of the respondent to provide correct information, misinterpretation of the questions or definitional problems.

Non-response error is related to respondents that may refuse to answer, are unable to respond or are too late in reporting. In these cases, data are imputed. The extent of any imputation error decreases with increases in the response rate and attempts are therefore made to obtain as high a response rate as possible. The response rate for the BP-CIA questionnaire, which is used to collect foreign affiliate trade statistics, is around 70%. Analysts keep in contact with the respondents to try to maximize the response rate. Slow reporting is often an issue.

Processing error may occur at various stages of processing such as data entry, editing and tabulation. Measures have been taken to minimize these errors. Data entry and edit are performed simultaneously due to the spreadsheet design which allows errors to be quickly seen. Historical ratios also aid in eliminating outliers created by data entry. Tabulation is automated to eliminate human error.

Documentation

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