How to read Statistics Canada's heating-system table for your province

What the table is, in one paragraph

The table comes from the Households and the Environment Survey. Every two years, Statistics Canada asks households what their main heating system is and what energy it uses. The results are published as percentages for Canada, each province and a list of census metropolitan areas, for reference years 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2021 and 2023. The latest release, for 2023, came out in September 2025. There are no counts of homes, only shares.

Step 1: find the right geography

Open the table and set the geography to your province first, then to your census metropolitan area if one is listed. The list includes places such as Halifax, Moncton, Saint John, St. John's, Montréal, Québec, Ottawa-Gatineau, Toronto, Hamilton, Winnipeg and Regina, among many others.

Start with the province, because city estimates are based on fewer responses and are more often flagged or suppressed. Use the city only when its cells are clean. For example, in 2023 the Moncton area reported 38% of households on a mini-split, a usable figure, while several other Moncton cells were suppressed.

Step 2: check the percentage base

This is the mistake we see most. The table uses two different denominators, and the footnotes tell you which:

• System types and fuels at the top level are a percentage of all households. "Forced air furnace: 66%" in Ontario means 66% of all Ontario households.
• Fuel inside a system type is a percentage of households that have that system. "Natural gas forced air furnace: 80%" in Ontario means 80% of households with a furnace, not 80% of all households.

To get a share of all households, multiply. In Ontario in 2023, 66% of households had a furnace and 80% of those burned gas, so gas furnaces were roughly 53% of all Ontario households. That multiplication is your own estimate, and you should label it that way, because the two figures each carry survey error.

There is a third base in the 2023 release: the "centralized HVAC system" line is a percentage of apartment households only. In Ontario it was 25%, which does not mean a quarter of Ontario homes.

Step 3: read the quality flags

Each cell can carry a status:

• No flag: a normal estimate.
• E: use with caution. The estimate is published but less precise.
• F: too unreliable to publish. The cell is empty.

Two rules follow. Never treat F as zero; it means "we can't say", which is different from "none". And when you quote an E value, say so. In Nova Scotia, for instance, the heat pump share in 2013 was 6%, flagged E, so the claim "heat pumps rose from about 6% to 25%" should carry that caution.

F cells tell you something too. In 2023, Alberta's and Saskatchewan's heat pump shares were F. That doesn't prove they were zero, but it does tell you heat pumps were too uncommon in the sample to measure, which is itself useful when you plan.

Step 4: account for the 2023 category change

The 2023 release added categories that earlier years didn't have: mini-split heat pumps, heated floors, and centralized systems in apartments. When new categories appear, some households that used to be counted under older categories move into the new ones.

The effect shows clearly in the totals. Nationally, the share of households with a forced-air furnace was 51% in 2021 and 46% in 2023, while 13% of apartment households reported a centralized system in 2023. The "all primary heating systems" line itself fell from 93% to 86%. A drop of that size in two years is far more likely to be reclassification than a sudden collapse in furnaces.

The practical rule: compare 2013 with 2021 for long-run trends using consistent categories, and treat 2021-to-2023 changes with care. When you do compare across 2023, say what changed.

Step 5: compare over a decade, not two years

Two-year changes are noisy. Ten-year changes are where the signal is. Some examples from the table, comparing 2013 with 2023:

Even with the caveats, these tell a clear story. The Maritimes have shifted hard toward heat pumps; Quebec is moving steadily; the Prairies have barely moved.

Step 6: turn the reading into a planning question

The table is context, not a plan. The useful move is to turn each finding into a question about your own company:

1. Where is the market heading? If heat pumps rose sharply in your province, ask what share of your installs they are. If you are well below the market's direction, that is a gap worth discussing.
2. Which fuel sits inside your systems? If most boilers in your province burn oil, as in PEI (78% in 2023) or Nova Scotia (65%), your boiler customers are also likely conversion prospects.
3. What is shrinking? If baseboards or oil are falling fast, the remaining customers may be harder to reach, and marketing aimed at them should be judged on cost per booked job.
4. What is too small to measure? An F cell on heat pumps means you would be early. Early can be good, but it should be a small, watched bet.

Our growth plan runs exactly these questions with your numbers beside the market's.

Common misreadings to avoid

• "Heat pumps are 8% of the market, so they should be 8% of my installs." The table measures the installed base, not annual sales. A line can be a small share of homes and a large share of current installs.
• "Gas furnaces are 78% of homes." That is the share of furnace homes using gas, nationally, not of all homes.
• "Furnaces fell five points in two years." Mostly a category change.
• "The F cell means zero." It means unmeasurable.
• "Toronto's numbers are the province's numbers." City and province figures differ, and city figures are less precise.

A worked reading for one province

Here is a short reading of British Columbia, done the way we recommend.

Start with the top-level shares for 2023: furnaces 36%, baseboards 28%, heat pumps 10%, boilers 9%, heated floors 5%. Natural gas was the main energy for 42% of households and electricity for 36%. Now go inside the systems: 84% of furnace homes and 64% of boiler homes used gas. Then the decade: furnaces 46% to 36%, heat pumps 4% to 10%, with the 2023 category change softening the furnace decline.

The planning questions that follow: are heat pumps at least 10% of your installs, and growing? Are your boiler customers mostly on gas, and therefore less likely to be conversion prospects than in the Maritimes? Is your baseboard audience, 28% of homes, getting any marketing at all? Our British Columbia page goes further.

Where to go next

The table describes homes. Two other Statistics Canada tables complete the picture: business counts for the competitor field, and monthly natural gas distribution for seasonality. Our guide to gas season capacity math covers the second. If you want us to do the reading for your service area, that is what a market data brief is for. We are a marketing and consulting service, not a contractor; call, text or email if you would like help reading your province.