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In international trade, imports refer to goods and services purchased by Canadian residents from residents of other countries. Billions of dollars of goods and services cross Canada’s border each year. In 2019, Canadians imported a total of $768 billion worth of goods and services. Canada’s largest source of imports by far is the United States. (See Canada-US Economic Relations.) The European Union, China and Mexico are also major sources of imported goods and services.

TC Energy Corporation (formerly TransCanada Corporation) is a natural gas, oil and power-generation company headquartered in Calgary, Alberta. TC Energy owns more than 92,600 km of natural gas pipeline in North America and transports more than 25 per cent of the gas consumed on the continent. It also operates power plants and gas storage facilities. A public company, it trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TRP. In 2018, TC Energy registered $13.7 billion in revenue and $3.5 billion in profit and held $98.9 billion in assets. The company employs about 7,300 people, more than half of them in Canada.

Keystone XL was a proposed 1,947 km long pipeline project that would have carried crude oil from Alberta to Nebraska. It was owned by Calgary-based TC Energy Corporation. The pipeline was named XL for “export limited.” First proposed in July 2008, it was the prospective fourth phase of TC Energy’s existing Keystone Pipeline system. In Canada, Keystone XL had the support of both the federal and Alberta governments. However, the project faced significant opposition and legal challenges on environmental grounds. In January 2021, United States president Joe Biden cancelled its permit on his first day in office. On 9 June 2021, TC Energy and the Alberta government announced the termination of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Roots Corporation (better known as Roots or Roots Canada) is a publicly traded retail clothing business. It was co-founded by fashion designers and businessmen Michael Budman and Don Green, both from Detroit, Michigan. Budman and Green first met in 1962, when they were attending Camp Tamakwa in Ontario’s Algonquin Park. Following their graduation from Michigan State University, Budman moved to Canada in 1969 and Green followed a few years later in 1972. In 1973, Budman and Green began production of their version of the “negative heel” shoe — the first product sold under the Roots brand. That same year, on 15 August, the duo opened their first store in Toronto. Inspired by their early years at Algonquin Park, Budman and Green quickly made Roots, with its beaver logo and cottage feel, an iconic Canadian brand. In 2015, Budman and Green sold a majority stake to Searchlight Capital Partners, though the founders remain prominent shareholders. In October 2017, Roots made its initial public offering (IPO) in Canada, trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol ROOT.

On 1 January 1975, the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) — which was founded as the Canadian Record Manufacturer’s Association in 1964 and renamed Music Canada in 2011 — began certifying sales of singles and albums in Canada.

Canada's dairy-products industry is made up of companies that process raw milk and cream.

The Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, better known as ACTRA, is the union that represents performers in Canada’s English-language radio, television and film industries. Through its Performers’ Rights Society, it secures and disburses use fees, royalties, residuals and all other forms of performers’ compensation. Some of ACTRA's other activities include administering health insurance and retirement plans for its 22,000 members, negotiating and administering collective agreements, minimum rates and working conditions, lobbying for Canadian content and a strong Canadian production industry, and promoting and celebrating Canadian talent.

 The first formal advertisement in Canada was an offer of butter for sale that appeared in 1752 in an official government publication called the Halifax Gazette. In 1764 the Québec Gazette (later renamed the Chronicle-Telegraph) was founded, as much to carry news of merchandise as events.

Canada's slaughtering and meat-processing sector comprises livestock slaughter and carcass dressing, secondary processors that manufacture and package meat products for retail sale, and purveyors that prepare portion-ready cuts for hotel, restaurant and institutional food service.

Western societies are relying increasingly on communication through various media and relatively less on face-to-face contact to organize and co-ordinate activities, to disseminate knowledge and information, to educate and entertain.

Some materials and products that move by rail, ship, air or highway within Canada or across our national boundaries are classified as dangerous goods because they are flammable, explosive, toxic or potentially harmful to people or the ENVIRONMENT. Until 1985 their movement was not well regulated.

A number of organizations were formed to oppose the reciprocity agreement of January 1911 between Canada and the US. Most prominent was the Canadian National League, headed by Toronto lawyer Zebulon Lash.

The earliest booksellers in Canada were Jean Seto and Joseph Bargeas, who in the 1840s and 1850s operated out of Montréal, importing books "for the gentry, the merchants, and the garrison: that is, a small middle and upper-middle-class readership.

Les Éditions Jacques Ostiguy Inc. Music publishing firm founded in 1978 in Saint-Hyacinthe, Que, by Jacques and Claudette Ostiguy. A large section of the catalogue, which numbered 24 entries in 1990, is devoted to works for organ by Canadian composers, a collection directed by Lucien Poirier.

​Prior to the First World War, Canada boasted 117 independent breweries. But by the early 1980s, just 10 brewing companies remained in Canada — and the three largest, Molson, Labatt and Carling O’Keefe — owned 96 per cent of the market.

The Canadian oil sands (or tar sands) are a large area of petroleum extraction from bitumen, located primarily along the Athabasca River with its centre of activity close to Fort McMurray in Alberta, approximately 400 km northeast of the provincial capital, Edmonton. Increased global energy demand, high petroleum dependency and geopolitical conflict in key oil producing regions has driven the exploration of unconventional oil sources since the 1970s which, paired with advances in the field of petroleum engineering, has continued to make bitumen extraction economically profitable at a time of rising oil prices. Oil sands are called “unconventional” oil because the extraction process is more difficult than extracting from liquid (“conventional”) oil reserves, causing higher costs of production and increased environmental concerns.

Farm Credit Canada (FCC), known as the Farm Credit Corporation until 2001, was established under the Farm Credit Act of 1959. FCC is Canada's largest agricultural term lender and is dedicated  to serving the financial needs of Canadian farmers. FCC is a Crown corporation that reports to the Canadian Parliament through the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food. (See also Department of Agriculture.)

The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) was established by an act of the National Assembly on 15 July 1965. The CDPQ was created to  manage funds deposited by the Québec Pension Plan (QPP), a public insurance plan similar to the Canadian Pension Plan (CPP). The CDPQ is a global investment group with 10 international offices. As of 30 June 2021 the CDPQ’s net assets totaled $390 billion.

During the Great Depression, the federal government sanctioned the creation of a system of unemployment relief camps, where in exchange for room-and-board, single men did physically demanding labour. The government was criticized for establishing the camps rather than addressing the need for reasonable work and wages.