In 2019, businesses in Canada slightly shifted their focus away from local markets, which refers to the geographical region in which a business has its main Canadian operations. Although a large majority of businesses (77.6%) still identified local markets as their main focus, this proportion was down from 80.6% in 2017. Moreover, 11.4% indicated the 'rest of Canada' as their main market (8.2% in 2017).
The dependency on a local market varied greatly by business size. Approximately four in five small businesses relied on the local market as their main market, compared with just over half of large businesses. Businesses in Canada also relied less on the United States (falling from 8.9% in 2017 to 8.7% in 2019) and on other international markets (falling from 2.4% in 2017 to 2.2% in 2019; see note to readers).
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