Canada finds companies make almost all the data they use, and buy very little
A Statistics Canada study counts data as the largest single kind of intangible investment in the Canadian business sector.
Picture made for ABURA Bureau.
On 13 March 2025 Statistics Canada published a study of data, intangible capital and economic growth, applying a method used for the United States and Europe to Canadian businesses for the first time.
Its central finding is that data was the largest kind of intangible investment. In 2019, investment in data assets was about $57 billion, of which $54 billion was data companies produced themselves and $3 billion data they bought, in Canadian dollars. The study puts data at about 30% of all intangible investment that year, and finds intangible capital made a significant contribution to productivity growth, especially in services.
The split is the story. Almost all the data a company relies on, it builds itself, through its own staff and systems, and very little changes hands. That is a sign of how thin the market for company data still is, not of how little the data is worth. Most of what companies hold has never been offered to anyone, so it has never had a price.
