Composed of production units (establishments).

Generally the statistics are collected near the establishment, except for the financial statistics which are generally available for the business (enterprise) as a whole.

The establishments are classified according to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) 1997. This classification was developed by Canada, the United States and Mexico. Consequently, it support the comparison of the data (with 5 digits) between these countries. Certain sectors are not yet harmonized (wholesale, construction, finance, public administration).

The various professions are classified according to the Standard Occupational Classification . Most recent is that of 1991.

Products are divided into goods and services.

The goods offered (outputs) or used (inputs) are classified according to the Standard Classification of Goods (SCG with 8 digits), which is an extension of an international classification system, the Harmonized System (HS with 6 digits). Concordance tables make it possible to compile the data on imports and exports according to the Harmonized System.

Currently, a classification of the services is under development with Statistics Canada.

The territory is usually classified using Québec's Geographical Code (compatible with the Canadian Standard Geographical Classification of 1996). The coding base is the municipality. The code then makes it possible to organize the municipalities in Regional County Municipalities (RCM), Québec's Administrative Regions or another geographical groupings. Certain information is produced on much finer levels, for Geomatics applications for example.

For certain information, it is important to have time series. The frequency of production varies: monthly, quarterly, annually, etc.

The monthly data reflect the seasonal character of certain industries. Certain techniques are used to remove the seasonal variation. One speaks then about Seasonally Adjusted Data.