Monday, October 20, 2008

Canadian Business Patterns Question

Question
A researcher is interested in the following information:
1. Number of retail food outlets in British Columbia, by the smallest area unit possible (e.g. by Census Division, Census Consolidated Subdivision, whatever is available).

2. The above data broken into types of food outlets (e.g. grocery stores, at the same area unit.
The researcher sent her request directly to infostat@statcan.gc.ca and they redirected the researcher to me, with the following accompanying information:


To obtain the information you have requested, it is available from the

Canadian Business Patterns (Catalogue No.: 61F0040XCB).


The Canadian Business Patterns (CBP) contains data that reflect counts of

business establishments for nine (9) employment size ranges, including

"indeterminate", for Canada, the provinces/territories, census divisions,

census subdivisions, census metropolitan areas and census agglomerations.

The establishment counts are divided by industry based on the North

American Industry Classification System (NAICS 2, 3, 4 and 6-digit level)

and the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC 1, 2, 3 and 4-digit

level).


A second product called "Canadian business patterns - revenue ranges"

(catalogue no.: 61F0102XCB) expands the basis of CBP. This product

provides a count of businesses based on revenue ranges. Users can thus

analyze businesses on the basis of industry, revenue and geographic area.

Data are provided at the three-digit level of the North American Industry

Classification System, encompassing about 99 industries, or sub-sectors,

and by six revenue ranges.


These products are available for free to Canadian educational institutions

participating in the Data Liberation Initiative. Please note, however,

that the DLI is limited to students, faculty and administration for

academic research and teaching purposes.



Problem #1: I had already downloaded the Canadian Business Patterns (CBP) data from the FTP site but I have never tried to use this product. I have now installed it on my PC, using the install instructions at http://www.statcan.ca/english/Dli/Data/Ftp/cbp/cbp2008.htm but I am getting an error. (The error message tells me to install the CDROM in the appropriate drive. Both the NAICS and CBP folders are on my C drive, in their respective folders, as installed.) I phoned the folks at infostat@statcan.gc.ca and apparently someone will help me troubleshoot this on Monday. Unless, you can help troubleshoot?



Problem #2: I am not sure where to find the second product "Canadian business patterns - revenue ranges" on the DLI FTP site. Is this product part of the DLI Collection?

Answer

As far as the Canadian business patterns - revenue ranges is concerned, this product was last released in 2002 as the Canadian Business Pattern is released frequently. I am not sure of the relevance of using this one while using the last CBP.
I did check with Subject-matter and the latest version released was the 2000 issue released in 2002. That copy is on the FTP site at the following link:
http://www.statcan.ca/english/Dli/Data/Ftp/cbp/cbp2000.htm

As mentioned, it may not be relevant to the latest copy of the CBP that you will be using.

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