AI Analysis: Vehicles entering Canada by land, by vehicle type and licence plate

Executive Summary

Statistics Canada's Table 24100052 tracks over 54 years of monthly land border vehicle entries into Canada (January 1972 – February 2026), encompassing 9,750 records across five vehicle types and three licence plate categories. Automobiles overwhelmingly dominate cross-border traffic and are nearly perfectly correlated with total vehicle volumes (r=0.990), while the dataset's most dramatic anomaly is the COVID-19-driven collapse in 2020 followed by a sharp recovery. The all-time peak of 5,770,711 vehicles occurred in August 1991, and the data exhibits strong right-skew and clear seasonal patterns throughout its history.

Key Findings

• The all-time monthly peak was 5,770,711 total vehicles entering Canada in August 1991, while the overall monthly average is ~749,808 — a gap driven by strong seasonal variation and a heavily right-skewed distribution where the median (184,132) is less than one-quarter of the mean.
• Automobiles are the dominant vehicle category, with a mean of ~1.6 million monthly entries and a near-perfect correlation with total vehicle volumes (r=0.990), confirming they are the primary driver of overall land border traffic.
• Trucks show an independent, steadily growing long-term trend with only a weak positive link to total vehicles (r=0.229) and a slight negative correlation with motorcycles (r=-0.196), reflecting their role as trade-driven rather than leisure-driven crossings.
• The COVID-19 pandemic caused the most extreme anomaly in the entire 54-year dataset, producing a dramatic collapse in border crossings around 2020 followed by one of the largest year-over-year rebounds on record as restrictions lifted.
• Motorcycles exhibit moderate seasonal correlation with automobiles (r=0.636) but remain a minor category, ranging from just 19 to 65,607 monthly entries, while 'Other land vehicles' are nearly always zero with a recorded maximum of only 2,090.
• Clear and consistent seasonal patterns are present throughout the dataset, with summer months regularly peaking and winter months dipping across all passenger vehicle categories over the full 54-year span.
• The dataset's standard deviation (~1,018,813) exceeds its mean (~749,808), and the interquartile range spans from 1,368 (Q25) to 1,279,173 (Q75), underscoring the extreme variability driven by differences across vehicle types and licence plate categories.