The Québec aerospace industry is composed of world-class manufacturers, renowned OEMs, top-notch subcontractors and suppliers, prestigious and unique educational institutions that train a skilled and highly competitive workforce, and prominent research centres. It is also home to the headquarters of international organizations such as the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the International Business Aviation Council (IBAC) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

This concentration of key players from the aerospace industry’s corporate, academic, scientific and association sectors gives the region an exceptional industrial and research capability. 

With 98% of Québec’s aerospace activity concentrated in Greater Montréal, the region is one of world’s leading aerospace centres, along with Seattle and Toulouse. 

The Greater Montréal region also has the second-largest density of aerospace jobs in the world. One in 200 Québecers work in the aerospace industry. In Montréal, one person in 95 works in a job related to the aerospace sector.

Québec’s aerospace sector :

• Is an industrial base that includes 235 companies;
• Has revenues of $10,9 billion, 80% of which stems from exports;
• Employs about 40,000 workers;
• Ranks sixth in the world in terms of sales, after the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany and Japan;
• Ranks first in R&D in the Québec manufacturing sector ;
• Is one of the rare places in the world where virtually all the components for a new airplane can be found within a 30 kilometre radius.

Québec’s aerospace industry represents : 

• 55 % of Canada’s total aerospace production;
• 50 % of Canadian employment in the sector;
• 70 % of total Canadian aerospace research and development expenditures.

* Source: L’industrie aérospatiale au Québec, Faits saillants et chiffres sur le secteur pour 2010, a presentation by the Ministry of Economic Development, Innovation and Export Trade, November 2010.