Can you give me numbers for my city only?

Sometimes. The heating-system table includes census metropolitan areas such as Toronto, Calgary and Halifax, but many city figures are marked as unreliable or suppressed. Where a city number is too weak to use, we say so and fall back to the province.

How current is the data?

The heating-system survey runs every two years, and the latest release covers 2023. The business counts are the June 2026 edition. The gas distribution table ends at December 2025 and is now marked inactive by Statistics Canada.

Do you include rebate programs?

Yes, as of the date of the brief and linked to the program administrator. Programs change often, so the brief tells you to confirm details with the administrator before you advertise them.

Is the brief yours to keep and share?

Yes. It is written for your company, and you can share it with partners, lenders or staff. The underlying public data belongs to its publishers and stays linked.

Provincial Market Data Briefs for Heating Owners

A market data brief tells you what kind of heating market you actually operate in. It reports, from public sources, how homes in your province are heated, how that has shifted over a decade, how many competitors are registered in your trade category, and how sharply demand swings through the year. Every figure links to its source. Where we combine or divide figures, we label the result as our analysis.

What a brief contains

A standard brief runs six to ten pages and covers five topics.

Heating mix. Furnace, boiler, heat pump, baseboard and other systems as a share of all households, from Statistics Canada's Table 38-10-0286-01, for 2013 through 2023.
Fuel inside each system. The same table reports, for households with a furnace or boiler, what fuel it burns. In Alberta, 90% of furnace households used natural gas in 2023; in Prince Edward Island, 78% of boiler households used oil.
Competitor field. Employer locations in NAICS 238220 from the June 2026 Business Counts, broken down by employee size.
Demand curve. Monthly residential gas deliveries and customer counts from Table 25-10-0059-01, where your province has a gas network.
Programs. Current rebate and financing programs, with administrator, status and the date we checked.

For the territories, where the heating survey doesn't reach, we draw on the Canada Energy Regulator's territorial energy profiles.

Who it is for

Briefs are for owners making a decision with money attached: opening a second location, hiring a heat pump crew, buying a competitor, or deciding whether a boiler specialty still has room to grow. They also help when a lender or partner asks "how big is your market?" and you want an answer with sources.

How we read the data honestly

Public tables come with warnings, and a brief that ignores them misleads. We follow four rules.

Respect the quality flags. Statistics Canada marks some estimates "E" (use with caution) and suppresses others as "F" (too unreliable). We show E values with the flag and never publish an F value as a number.
Mind the percentage base. Fuel-within-system figures are a share of households with that system, not of all households. Mixing the two produces nonsense.
Flag category changes. The 2023 heating survey added categories, so a 2021-to-2023 drop in furnace share is partly a reclassification.
Don't trend the business counts. Statistics Canada advises against using its business counts as a time series, because method changes move the totals. We use them as a snapshot only.

A sample of what a brief shows

Here is the kind of analysis a brief carries, using national figures. In 2025, Canada had 7,035,303 residential natural gas customers at year end, up from 6,966,484 a year earlier, according to Table 25-10-0059-01. Dividing customers by the 16,754 employer locations in NAICS 238220 gives about 420 gas customers per location. That ratio is our analysis, it mixes plumbers into the denominator, and it shouldn't be read as a market share. What it does give you is a rough sense of density when you compare provinces: Saskatchewan works out near 722 and British Columbia near 354.

Timeline and what you receive

Most briefs take a couple of weeks once we agree the service area. You receive the written brief, a one-page summary, and a short call to walk through it. The scope and price are confirmed in writing before we start.

Mistakes the brief helps you avoid

Opening a heat pump division in a market where the data shows little movement yet.
Assuming oil boiler replacement work will last, when programs and fuel trends in your province say otherwise.
Reading "16,754 competitors" as 16,754 heating rivals, when many are plumbers.
Advertising a rebate that closed last quarter.

A brief often leads straight into the growth plan, and our provincial pages give a free taste of the approach. We are a consulting and marketing service, not a contractor. To ask what a brief would cover in your area, call, text or email; pricing explains how stand-alone work is quoted.

Provincial market data briefs, every figure sourced