Doing Business in Canada

Published in January 2018

Canada is a country in the north of North America. Its three territories and ten provinces run northwards to the Arctic Ocean and from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. It has a land mass covering 9.98 million square kilometers (3.85 million square miles), making it the world's fourth-largest by land area and second-largest country by area.

Canada is urbanized with 82% of the 35.15 million people concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, many near the southern border. Its capital is Ottawa, and its largest metropolitan areas are Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

Canada's long and complex relationship with the United States has had a significant impact on its economy and culture, but its advanced economy is the tenth-largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its natural resources and well-developed international trade networks.

Queen Elizabeth II is Canada's Head of State in this constitutional monarchy and federal parliamentary democracy. The country has two languages at a federal level – French and English. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many other countries.

Canada is a realm within the Commonwealth of Nations, a member of the Francophonie and part of several major international and intergovernmental institutions or groupings including the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the G7 (formerly G8), the Group of Ten, the G20, the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

Canada ranks among the highest in international measurements of government transparency, civil liberties, quality of life, economic freedom and education. As a developed country, Canada has the fifteenth-highest nominal per capita income globally as well as the tenth-highest ranking in the Human Development Index.

Many companies from Europe and commonwealth countries that have expanded to North America have found utilizing Canada as a starting point offers many advantages. Doing business in Canada is similar to these countries in areas such as business law and tax. For example, Canada has a VAT system similar to many European countries. Further, employees that relocate to Canada find a very good quality of life as evidenced in many indexes measuring this fact. Proximity to the US, with the majority of our population near the US border allows for expansion to the US from an established base in Canada.

For the most up-to-date statistics, this portal incorporates various live data feeds from:

• The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
• The World Bank
• The observatory of Economic Complexity