Annual Wholesale Trade Survey (AWTS)
Detailed information for 2024
Status:
Active
Frequency:
Annual
Record number:
2445
This survey collects the financial and operating data needed to develop national and regional economic policies and programs.
Description
This survey collects data required to produce economic statistics for the wholesale trade sector in Canada.
Data collected from businesses are aggregated with information from other sources to produce official estimates of national and provincial economic production for this sector.
Survey estimates are made available to businesses, governments, investors, associations, and the public. The data are used to monitor sector growth, measure performance, and make comparisons to other data sources to better understand this sector.
Statistical activity
The survey is administered as part of the Integrated Business Statistics Program (IBSP). The IBSP has been designed to integrate approximately 200 separate business surveys into a single master survey program. The IBSP aims at collecting industry and product detail at the provincial level while minimizing overlap between different survey questionnaires. The redesigned business survey questionnaires have a consistent look, structure, and content.
The integrated approach makes reporting easier for firms operating in different industries because they can provide similar information for each branch operation. This way they avoid having to respond to questionnaires that differ for each industry in terms of format, wording and even concepts. The combined results produce more coherent and accurate statistics on the economy.
Reference period: The calendar year, or the 12-month fiscal period for which the final day occurs on or between April 1st of the reference year and March 31st of the following year.
Collection period: February through November of the year after the reference period.
Subjects
- Retail and wholesale
- Wholesale sales and inventories
Data sources and methodology
Target population
This sector recognizes two main types of wholesalers: wholesale merchants and wholesale agents and brokers.
The survey population is the collection of all wholesale establishments from which the survey can realistically obtain information. The survey population will differ from the target population due to difficulties in identifying all the units that belong to the target population because of a possible lack of detailed information (e.g. industry misclassifications) for some units, particularly small businesses with low sales levels.
The survey population is comprised of all statistical establishments of incorporated and unincorporated businesses on the Statistics Canada's Business Register classified to the code 41 - Wholesale Trade according to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) 2022, as well as those small unincorporated businesses not on the Business Register, which are classified to the wholesale sector.
The observed population consists of all establishments classified to the code 41 - Wholesale Trade according to the NAICS 2022 found on the Statistics Canada Business Register as of the last day of the reference year (including establishments active for a part of the reference year).
Instrument design
The survey questionnaire contains generic modules designed to cover several service industries. These include revenue and expense modules.
In order to reduce response burden smaller firms receive a characteristics questionnaire (shortened version) that is industry-specific which does not include the revenue and expense modules. This shortened version is designed to collect both financial and non-financial characteristics, while revenue and expense data are extracted from administrative files.
Sampling
This is a sample survey with a cross-sectional design.
The Business Register is a repository of information reflecting the Canadian business population and exists primarily for the purpose of supplying frames for all economic surveys in Statistics Canada. It is designed to provide a means of coordinating the coverage of business surveys and of achieving consistent classification of statistical reporting units. It also serves as a data source for the compilation of business demographic information.
The major sources of information for the Business Register are updates from the Statistics Canada survey program and from Canada Revenue Agency's (CRA) Business Number account files. This CRA administrative data source allows for the creation of a universe of all business entities.
This survey is a pseudo-census with a cross-sectional design. All sampling units in the surveyed population taken from the Business Register are selected, but only a subset of larger companies (approximately 175 enterprises) received and responded to a questionnaire. Values for financial variables come primarily from survey and tax data (T1, T2, T3010 and T5013 files from CRA). For all remaining survey variables, survey data are used for the subset of units selected to receive a questionnaire while imputation is used for all non-selected units.
SAMPLING UNIT
The sampling unit is the enterprise, as defined on the Business Register.
SAMPLING AND SUB-SAMPLING
In a census, all sampling units are selected and are self-represented in the subsequent processing steps.
Data sources
Data collection for this reference period: 2025-02-17 to 2025-07-31
Responding to this survey is mandatory.
Data are collected directly from survey respondents and extracted from administrative files.
Administrative data
A strategy to replace survey data with tax data has been introduced to reduce the response burden and survey costs. The strategy involves using tax data instead of survey data for most units.
As part of the Integrated Business Statistics Program (IBSP), T1 tax data are used for unincorporated businesses, T2 tax data for incorporated businesses, T3010 tax data are used for charities and T5013 tax data are used for partnerships. Data replacement may be used to correct outliers or to replace partially or completely missing data. Tax data may also be used to reconcile survey data.
Data integration combines data from multiple data sources including survey data collected from respondents, administrative data from the Canada Revenue Agency or other forms of auxiliary data when applicable. During the data integration process, data are imported, transformed, validated, aggregated and linked from the different data source providers into the formats, structures and levels required for IBSP processing. Administrative data are used in a data replacement strategy for a large number of financial variables for most small and medium enterprises and a select group of large enterprises to avoid collection of these variables. Administrative data are also used as an auxiliary source of data for editing and imputation when respondent data are not available.
View the Questionnaire(s) and reporting guide(s) .
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