Trading with Canada: Chapter 3 - Identifying B.C.'s Growth Opportunities

The Trading with Canada article series is part of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade's Canada Connects initiative, a market expansion accelerator helping B.C. businesses identify growth opportunities across Canada. Through research on domestic trade flows, market demand, and sector competitiveness, this series explores where British Columbia businesses are best positioned to expand and how they can build new customers, partnerships, and revenue streams across the country. Read the first article here and the second article here.

Ongoing trade tensions, tariffs, and economic uncertainty have reinforced the importance of strengthening Canada's domestic economy and expanding commercial relationships within our own borders. Governments across the country are working to reduce interprovincial trade barriers, while businesses are increasingly looking to diversify revenue streams and reduce their exposure to external market disruptions.

Identifying attractive markets is only part of the answer. As part of the market intelligence supporting Canada Connects, the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade assessed which sectors offer the strongest opportunities for B.C. businesses looking to expand across Canada.

When people think about British Columbia's exports, they tend to think about the products that generate the largest trade volumes. However, one of the more interesting findings from our analysis is that the sectors generating the largest export volumes are not necessarily our next best growth opportunities.

British Columbia's Top Interprovincial Exports by Value

British Columbia's largest interprovincial exports are familiar. Mineral fuels account for more than $8 billion in annual exports to the rest of Canada, followed by transportation services at roughly $6 billion. Together, those two categories account for approximately one-quarter of all B.C. interprovincial exports. Professional services, food and beverages, software, information services, and wood products also rank among the province's largest export categories.

Those numbers tell us what B.C. sells today. They do not tell us where future growth opportunities are most likely to emerge.

To answer that question, we looked beyond export volume and evaluated sectors based on three factors:

• Is B.C. competitive in the sector?
• Is demand growing elsewhere in Canada?
• Does the industry have the capacity to expand into new markets?

Together, these measures provide a more useful framework for identifying opportunities that businesses can realistically pursue.

Our analysis measured competitiveness using Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA). A score above 100 indicates that B.C. exports more of a product or service than would normally be expected based on the national average.

Several sectors stand out.

Several of these sectors combine strong competitiveness with growing demand. Professional services, software, information and cultural services, research and development, and transportation all perform well across multiple measures. They are competitive within Canada, demand for them is growing, and B.C.'s employment and capital investment trends suggest the province has capacity to support further expansion.

Other sectors present a more complicated picture. Wood products remain highly competitive and continue to see strong demand growth across Canada, yet the industry faces pressure at home as employment and capacity trend downward. Computers and electronics show exceptional growth rates and competitiveness, but available production capacity appears much tighter.

Competitiveness and demand are only part of the picture. For businesses to expand into new markets, British Columbia also needs the workforce, expertise, and industry capacity to support growth.

The industry specialization analysis points to several sectors where B.C. is both more concentrated than the national average and gaining employment share relative to the rest of the country. These include information and cultural industries, transportation and warehousing, and professional, scientific and technical services. Together, they reinforce the trade findings and provide additional evidence that many of B.C.'s strongest export sectors are also building capacity at home.

A location quotient above 1 indicates that an industry is more concentrated in B.C. than in the Canadian economy overall. The positive employment trends suggest these sectors are not only competitive exporters today but are continuing to add workers and strengthen their position within the provincial economy.

The same analysis also highlights an important contrast. Forestry remains B.C.'s most concentrated industry by far, with a location quotient approaching 3.0, but employment in the sector has been declining. This mirrors what the trade analysis already suggested: competitiveness alone does not always translate into expansion potential.

A further distinction matters when moving from economic analysis to economic development. Some sectors are highly competitive but are not particularly well suited to an export development program.

Accommodation and food services provide a good example. They are among B.C.'s strongest sectors by competitiveness, but much of that activity reflects spending by visitors from other provinces rather than businesses exporting products or services into another market. The same dynamic applies to much of the arts, entertainment, recreation, education, and health sectors. These industries matter to the provincial economy, but they are better served by tourism, visitor-economy, and talent-attraction strategies than by outbound business development programs.

Other sectors sit outside the reach of a program like Canada Connects for different reasons. Mineral fuels, utilities, mining projects, exploration activity, and parts of the financial sector are often shaped by infrastructure, regulation, capital requirements, or a small number of dominant players. They remain important economic opportunities, but market development and business matchmaking are unlikely to be the primary drivers of growth.

After applying these additional screens, fourteen sectors emerge as particularly strong outbound expansion opportunities for businesses participating in Canada Connects. These are sectors where businesses can plausibly increase sales across provincial borders and where economic development efforts can help connect firms with customers, partners, and opportunities in other markets.

For Canada Connects, the implication is straightforward. The strongest opportunities lie in helping B.C. businesses expand in sectors where competitiveness, growing demand, and the ability to scale all intersect. That points toward a knowledge-services push into Ontario, a deliberate effort to develop opportunities in Quebec, and continued deepening of B.C.'s already strong position in Alberta.

Canada Connects was created to help businesses capitalize on those opportunities. The research identifies where British Columbia holds an advantage. The program helps businesses translate that intelligence into customers, partnerships, and long-term growth across Canada.

In a period when strengthening Canada's economy has become both an economic and strategic priority, helping businesses expand within the domestic market goes beyond increasing sales and becomes about building a stronger, more connected, and more resilient Canadian economy.

In our final article, we'll look beyond today's trade flows and examine the emerging opportunities that could shape British Columbia's next phase of domestic growth.