Canadian Business Formation
Monthly business openings and closings across Canada, by province and sector. Source: Statistics Canada Table 33-10-0270-01, the experimental seasonally-adjusted Monthly Business Openings and Closures series. Updated monthly with a roughly three-month publication lag.
Latest: January 2026133 months of historyDownload JSON
- Openings
- 45,914
- Closings
- 46,936
- Net change
- −1,022
- Active businesses
- 936,162
Net change is down 1,086 from the prior month and down 401 year over year.
Bar height shows monthly net change (openings minus closings) at the national level across the business sector. Red bars indicate months where closings exceeded openings.
The CFIB Monthly Business Barometer is a sentiment index on a 0-100 scale: above 50 means small business owners expecting stronger performance over the next 12 months (long-term) or 3 months (short-term) outnumber those expecting weaker performance. The dashed red line marks the breakeven. Source: CFIB Business Barometer.
| Province | Openings | Closings | Net |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ontario | 18,928 | 19,799 | −871 |
| British Columbia | 7,847 | 8,022 | −175 |
| Quebec | 6,997 | 7,124 | −127 |
| Alberta | 6,807 | 6,981 | −174 |
| Manitoba | 1,293 | 1,271 | +22 |
| Saskatchewan | 1,189 | 1,204 | −15 |
| Nova Scotia | 1,008 | 1,066 | −58 |
| New Brunswick | 769 | 752 | +17 |
| Newfoundland and Labrador | 631 | 661 | −30 |
| Prince Edward Island | 211 | 241 | −30 |
| Yukon | 74 | 77 | −3 |
| Northwest Territories | 43 | 50 | −7 |
| Nunavut | — | — | — |
| Sector | Openings | Closings | Net |
|---|---|---|---|
| Construction | 6,424 | 6,650 | −226 |
| Professional, scientific and technical services | 6,307 | 6,493 | −186 |
| Health care and social assistance | 4,035 | 3,927 | +108 |
| Transportation and warehousing | 3,434 | 3,867 | −433 |
| Retail trade | 2,919 | 3,163 | −244 |
| Accommodation and food services | 2,848 | 2,824 | +24 |
| Other services (except public administration) | 2,676 | 2,824 | −148 |
| Real estate and rental and leasing | 2,313 | 2,424 | −111 |
| Administrative and support, waste management and remediation services | 2,199 | 2,220 | −21 |
| Manufacturing | 1,202 | 1,284 | −82 |
| Wholesale trade | 927 | 1,003 | −76 |
| Arts, entertainment and recreation | 728 | 675 | +53 |
| Educational services | 505 | 494 | +11 |
| Information and cultural industries | 485 | 492 | −7 |
| Mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction | 221 | 204 | +17 |
| Forestry, fishing and hunting | 217 | 251 | −34 |
| Utilities | — | — | — |
The underlying data is Statistics Canada Table 33-10-0270-01, the experimental Monthly Business Openings and Closures (MBOC) series, seasonally adjusted. A business is counted as an opening in the reference month if it had no payroll in any of the prior 12 months and has payroll in the reference month. A closing is the inverse. Net change is openings minus closings.
All counts are at the establishment level and cover the business sector (excludes most public administration and parts of education and health where StatCan does not maintain the underlying payroll universe). Suppression rules apply at the small-cell level, which is why some sector-by-province cells show as — for smaller jurisdictions and sectors.
StatCan revises prior months as new payroll data flows in. The tracker uses the most recent release of the series. Methodology details are available from Statistics Canada at the source link below.
Source: Statistics Canada Table 33-10-0270-01 · Source: Statistics Canada. Adapted by Maple & Bay. · Released under the Statistics Canada Open Licence. Dataset last ingested May 14, 2026.