Canadian Chamber Launches BDLNow: A Real-Time Barometer for Canada’s Economy 

September 9, 2025

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 OTTAWA—The Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s Business Data Lab (BDL) is transforming the way we understand Canada’s economic performance with the launch of BDLNow, a new nowcast tool that provides real-time estimates of Canada’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), well ahead of official Statistics Canada data. 

BDLNow empowers policymakers, business leaders, analysts, media, and financial sector professionals with timely, accessible, and informed insights to monitor economic shifts, assess market conditions, and support forward-looking decision-making. 

Tracking the economy can be challenging and BDLNow helps users demystify economic projections.” said Andrew DiCapua, Principal Economist, Business Data Lab, Canadian Chamber of Commerce. “This tool delivers insights into what’s shaping Canada’s economy in an accessible way, empowering Canadians to make better decisions. Our goal was to break down the complexity behind this tool and enhance understanding of the market-moving indicators that matter most. 

BDLNow is designed as a public resource that supports a well-informed and robust economic conversation across Canada. Updated every Monday, the tool allows users to track how updates for key economic indicators influence each GDP projection, compare against previous estimates, and how these compare to other professional forecasters. 

At a time when economic uncertainty is high and the need for timely intelligence has never been greater, BDLNow bridges the gap between private forecasts and today’s demand for real-time data,” said Patrick Gill, Vice President, Business Data Lab, Canadian Chamber of Commerce. “This is not just about faster data — it’s about better decisions, delivered with trusted, unbiased analysis 

The launch of BDLNow builds on the Business Data Lab’s commitment to democratizing data and ensuring organizations have the future-focused, real-time and local insights they need to better understand and navigate the Canadian economy. BDLNow joins a suite of tools already available, including the Business Conditions Terminal, the Canada-U.S. Trade Tracker, and the Canadian and U.S. City Tariff Vulnerability Indexes.

Together, these tools reinforce BDL’s role as a leader in economic innovation and a trusted source of data-driven insights for the public and private sectors alike.

About BDLNow

BDLNow is a nowcast tool, updated weekly, that produces real-time estimates of Canada’s quarterly gross domestic product (GDP) growth well ahead of official Statistics Canada figures. A nowcast is a forecasting tool that employs a dynamic factor model, which incorporates high-frequency indicators and predicts the near-term estimate for each indicator. The relative importance of each indicator and its prediction in the model are updated and evolve as new data becomes available. BDLNow incorporates 45 high-frequency economic indicators to produce a weekly GDP estimate.

About Business Data Lab (BDL) 

We know that turning the overwhelming amount of economic data out there into actionable insights is a challenge for many organizations. That’s why the Business Data Lab (BDL), launched in February 2022 by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, provides free tools and real-time insights that help organizations understand Canada’s economy as it is now and as it could be in the future. With support from Statistics Canada and funding from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, we strive to ensure that rapid economic change and shifting business dynamics don’t leave Canada’s decision-makers behind. We are democratizing data on Canadian business conditions. By providing future-focused, real-time and local insights, we help organizations better understand and navigate the Canadian economy.

About the Canadian Chamber of Commerce — The Future of Business Success

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce is Canada’s largest and most activated business network — representing over 400 chambers of commerce and boards of trade and more than 200,000 business of all sizes, from all sectors of the economy and from every part of the country — to create the conditions for our collective success. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce is the undisputed champion and catalyst for the future of business success. From working with government on economy-friendly policy to providing services that inform commerce and enable trade, we give each of our members more of what they need to succeed: insight into markets, competitors and trends, influence over the decisions and policies that drive business success and impact on business and economic performance.

Contact

Shane Mackenzie
Vice President, Media and Stakeholder Communications
613.302.7683
smackenzie@chamber.ca

Rewa Mourad
Strategic Communications and Content Specialist
rmourad@chamber.ca