Wholesale sales fall 1.6% to $91.6B on autos, potash

Wholesale sales in Canada fell 1.6 per cent in August to $91.6 billion, Statistics Canada said Oct. 15, as weaker motor vehicle and agricultural supply sales outweighed gains in building materials.

The agency’s Daily release said the figures are seasonally adjusted and exclude petroleum products, other hydrocarbons, oilseed and grain. Sales measured in volume terms fell 1.8 per cent. They were still 7.2 per cent higher than in August 2025.

Sales fell in five of seven subsectors, which together make up 70.6 per cent of wholesale sales, Statistics Canada said. Motor vehicles and parts dropped 3.8 per cent to $15.1 billion, ending six straight monthly increases. The motor vehicle industry group alone fell 4.6 per cent to $12.1 billion.

That is a different measure from the agency’s count of new vehicles sold to buyers. As we reported, zero-emission vehicles reached 13 per cent of new vehicle sales in August, a month in which Statistics Canada counted 174,611 new vehicles sold, up 4.9 per cent from a year earlier. Wholesale sales track what moves between distributors and dealers, not what leaves the lot.

Agricultural supplies fell 12.4 per cent to $3.5 billion, with lower sales from potash companies cited as the cause. Saskatchewan, home to much of Canada’s potash industry, had the second-largest provincial decline. Its wholesale sales fell 8.2 per cent to $3.78 billion, and Statistics Canada said agricultural supplies were the biggest drag. The release gave no further reason for the potash drop. The commodity has also been a political issue in the province, as shown in our earlier report on Moe’s criticism of a U.S. plan for Belarusian potash.

Ontario, which accounts for $47.8 billion of the national total, saw sales fall 1.6 per cent, led by a 3.7 per cent drop in motor vehicles to $10.5 billion. Quebec fell 1.7 per cent to $15.5 billion and British Columbia fell 2.4 per cent to $8.9 billion. Alberta rose 0.7 per cent to $10.4 billion. By our count of the agency’s table, sales fell in eight of 13 provinces and territories.

The main gain came in building materials and supplies, which rose 1.4 per cent to $14.1 billion, the eighth increase in a row. Lumber, millwork, hardware and other building supplies climbed 3.3 per cent to $6.6 billion. Statistics Canada did not say what drove the increase. The figures cover sales within Canada’s wholesale sector and do not measure exports, which are under pressure from U.S. duties on Canadian lumber that a B.C. council says are near 35 per cent.

Wholesale inventories were unchanged at $141.0 billion. Because sales fell while stock held steady, the inventory-to-sales ratio rose to 1.54 from 1.51 in July. The ratio estimates how many months it would take to clear stock at the current pace of sales. Motor vehicle and parts inventories fell 3.7 per cent to $17.9 billion, while pharmaceutical and pharmacy supplies inventories rose 6.6 per cent to $11.9 billion.

Wholesale sits between factories and stores, so it is a useful read on how goods are moving through the economy. Statistics Canada reported the same day that factory sales rose 1.5 per cent to $79.9 billion, a gain driven by higher prices rather than volume. Together with wholesale volumes falling 1.8 per cent, the data fit a picture of an economy that was already flat in July as factories and retail slipped, though one month of data does not make a trend.

Statistics Canada will publish an advance estimate for September wholesale sales on Oct. 26, with full September data due Nov. 13. The agency cautioned that seasonally adjusted figures are subject to revision, which can be large for recent months. Statistics Canada is the only source for these figures, and we found no independent reporting on the August wholesale numbers.

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via Statistics Canada, The Daily: Wholesale trade, August 2026