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Canadian RPAS statistics: certificates, registrations and flight reviewers

Free · Transport Canada figures as of 13 August 2026 · Updated monthly · Drone's View Canada

Transport Canada publishes these figures monthly in its Drone Zone newsletter. They are not consolidated anywhere else, they are not available as a dataset, and the newsletter’s own index page has been lagging its published issues. This page consolidates every issue that has carried a statistics table, so the seventeen-month series is readable in one place and downloadable as a CSV.

Pilot certificates and registrations — the full published series

Every “Drones by the numbers” table Transport Canada has published, from the first issue in 2025 to the most recent. Transport Canada publishes each snapshot inside a separate newsletter and does not consolidate them; this is that consolidation. A dash means Transport Canada was not yet publishing that metric — RPOCs first appear in Issue 4, and Level 1 Complex certificates, flight reviewers and training providers first appear in Issue 5. It does not mean zero.

Source: Transport Canada Drone Zone, “Drones by the numbers” in each issue linked above. Issue 9 (July 2026) carries no statistics table. Issue 1 is titled “February 2025” but its figures are stated accurate as of 6 March 2025; the date column follows the figures, not the title. Issue 10 (August 2026) does not repeat the Level 1 Complex training-provider count — the em-dash in that column marks a metric Transport Canada did not publish in that issue, not a zero. Issue 10 also introduces a metric this table does not yet carry: 3 pre-validated declaration acceptance letters. Every cell was read from the primary source; the series was re-verified on 8 August 2026 and Issue 10 added on 25 August 2026. Download the series as CSV.

What the numbers actually tell you

Level 1 Complex is the fastest-growing certificate in Canada

249 on 17 December 2025 to 709 on 13 August 2026 — a 2.8× increase in under eight months. Across that whole window the rate is about 59 new certificates a month; over the three most recent tables it runs at about 72 a month (75 in April, 69 in the six weeks to 10 June). It is growing faster in percentage terms than anything else Transport Canada reports, from a very small base. The Level 1 Complex exam only went live on 1 April 2025 and the BVLOS operating privileges only came into force on 4 November 2025, so this is a market being created in real time.

The supply-side constraint is the interesting part: only 78 of the 293 flight schools were Level 1 Complex training providers when Transport Canada last published that split, in June, and the certificate requires a minimum of 20 hours of ground school through a flight school. That 20-hour gate is a regulatory moat sitting in front of a cohort growing at 90 a month. The full Level 1 Complex pathway is here.

Advanced is growing at roughly 4,900 a year

Measured across the full published series rather than a single ten-week window: 16,338 on 6 March 2025 to 23,427 on 13 August 2026. That is 7,089 new Advanced certificates in 525 days — about 13.5 a day, or roughly 4,900 a year, against a base of 23,427. A 43% increase in seventeen months.

But the annual figure hides a large seasonal swing. Certification runs at roughly 8 per day in December through March and 20 per day in April through June — a 2.5× difference. If you are planning training capacity, marketing, or a product launch around this market, the spring is where the volume is.

Training supply is growing faster than the pilot population

Self-declared flight schools went from 198 to 293 between March 2025 and August 2026 — a 48% increase. Advanced certificate holders grew 43% over the same window, and Basic holders 23%. Schools are being added faster than pilots are being certified. For anyone deciding whether to enter the training market, that is the number that matters: the competition is thickening faster than the demand.

Certificates are outgrowing drone registrations

Over the same seventeen months, registered drones rose 13% while combined Basic and Advanced certificates rose 26%. In March 2025 there were 1.21 certificates for every registered drone; by August 2026 there were 1.35. The two series are not directly comparable — registration is per aircraft and does not expire — but the gap is widening, which suggests a growing population of certificate holders who are not currently flying a registered aircraft.

Basic outnumbers Advanced by more than six to one

141,956 against 23,427. Only about 14% of certified Canadian drone pilots hold Advanced. That ratio is worth keeping in mind whenever someone quotes a large number of “certified drone pilots” — the overwhelming majority hold the Basic certificate, which requires no flight review and permits no controlled-airspace or close-to-bystander operation.

There are 1,385 flight reviewers, and the number barely moves

1,328 in December 2025 to 1,385 in August 2026 — 57 new reviewers in eight months. Against roughly 4,900 new Advanced pilots a year, that works out to about 3.5 flight reviews per reviewer per year nationally. The flight review market is structurally oversupplied in aggregate, even though individual regions — particularly the territories — are badly underserved. Both things are true at once, because reviewers cluster where the population is.

Registered drones roughly equal certificate holders

122,945 registered aircraft against 165,383 Basic and Advanced certificates combined. Registration is per aircraft and does not expire, so the two series are not directly comparable — but the rough parity suggests most certificate holders register one aircraft, and a meaningful number hold a certificate without a currently registered drone.

Certificates issued by province and territory

Transport Canada publishes a separate dataset — drone pilot certificates issued by province and territory, 2019 to 2025 — on its aviation personnel licensing statistics page, updated 11 June 2026. It is almost entirely unused by third parties.

Issuance peaked at roughly 27,000 in 2019, the year the certification regime came into force and the existing pilot population converted, then fell to roughly 10,600 in 2025. The 2025 leaders were Ontario 2,529, Alberta 1,502 and Quebec 1,313.

Note the 2019 spike is an artefact of the regime starting, not a decline in interest since. A steady ~10,000 new certificates a year is the actual run rate.

Figures that are commonly misquoted

• “50,000+ pilots trained” and similar claims from training providers. Against a national total of 23,427 Advanced certificate holders, any single provider’s claim in that range needs scrutiny about what is being counted.
• Service fees. Transport Canada applied a Service Fees Act inflation adjustment on 1 April 2026, but several public pages still display the 2025 amounts. Confirm current fees in the Drone Management Portal before quoting them.
• Flight reviewer availability. The national ratio suggests oversupply; regional reality varies enormously. Neither figure alone describes the market.

Sources

Every figure on this page comes from a named Transport Canada publication. Nothing here is estimated, interpolated or modelled unless it is labelled as a derived figure.

1. Transport Canada, Drone Zone Issue 1 — February 2025, “Drones by the numbers”, accurate as of 6 March 2025. Figures stated accurate as of 6 March 2025 despite the February title. tc.canada.ca · verified 8 August 2026.
2. Transport Canada, Drone Zone Issue 2 — June 2025, “Drones by the numbers”, accurate as of 26 May 2025. tc.canada.ca · verified 8 August 2026.
3. Transport Canada, Drone Zone Issue 3 — October 2025, “Drones by the numbers”, accurate as of 3 October 2025. tc.canada.ca · verified 8 August 2026.
4. Transport Canada, Drone Zone Issue 4 — November 2025, “Drones by the numbers”, accurate as of 3 November 2025. tc.canada.ca · verified 8 August 2026.
5. Transport Canada, Drone Zone Issue 5 — December 2025, “Drones by the numbers”, accurate as of 17 December 2025. tc.canada.ca · verified 8 August 2026.
6. Transport Canada, Drone Zone Issue 6 — April 2026, “Drones by the numbers”, accurate as of 31 March 2026. tc.canada.ca · verified 8 August 2026.
7. Transport Canada, Drone Zone Issue 7 — May 2026, “Drones by the numbers”, accurate as of 30 April 2026. tc.canada.ca · verified 8 August 2026.
8. Transport Canada, Drone Zone Issue 8 — June 2026, “Drones by the numbers”, accurate as of 10 June 2026. tc.canada.ca · verified 8 August 2026. Most recent statistics table published.
9. Transport Canada, Drone Zone Issue 9 — July 2026. Contains no statistics table; listed so the gap in the series is explicit. tc.canada.ca · verified 8 August 2026.
10. Transport Canada, Drone Zone Issue 10 — August 2026, “Drones by the numbers”, accurate as of 13 August 2026. Introduces a new metric, pre-validated declaration acceptance letters (3), and does not repeat the Level 1 Complex training-provider count. tc.canada.ca · verified 25 August 2026. Most recent published table.
11. Transport Canada, Aviation personnel licensing statistics — drone pilot certificates issued by province and territory, 2019–2025, updated 11 June 2026. tc.canada.ca · verified 8 August 2026.

Derived figures. The following are this site’s arithmetic on the sources above, not Transport Canada figures: the ~4,900 new Advanced certificates a year run-rate; the ~59 per month Level 1 Complex rate; the 3.5 flight reviews per reviewer per year ratio; the 48% / 43% / 23% / 13% seventeen-month growth figures; the certificates-per-registered-drone ratio; and the 13.9% Advanced share of all certificate holders. Method: the change between two published tables divided by the number of days between their stated “accurate as of” dates. Rates are computed over the full 525-day series where the metric was published throughout, and over the shorter window where it was not. Transport Canada does not publish forecasts, and neither does this page.

Citing this page

This page may be quoted and linked freely. The underlying figures are Transport Canada’s and are Crown copyright; the compilation, the series and the derived figures are this site’s work. A citation and a link are appreciated:

Drone’s View Canada, “Canadian RPAS statistics: certificates, registrations and flight reviewers”, updated 8 August 2026. https://dronesview.ca/data/canadian-rpas-statistics

Spotted an error, or know of a Transport Canada figure that belongs here? Tell us and we will correct it and say so.

How this page is maintained

Updated monthly from the Drone Zone newsletter when a new statistics table is published. Every figure above is quoted as-of the date Transport Canada published it, not as-of the date you are reading. If a number here is stale, it is because Transport Canada has not published a newer one — and we will say so rather than interpolating.

Related reading

• The Advanced RPAS certificate — exam, flight review and real costs
• Can you fly a drone in Ontario parks? — the municipal and provincial park layer
• Level 1 Complex — the fastest-growing certificate and the 20-hour ground school gate
• Drone laws by province and territory — the non-federal layer, all 13 compared
• Remote ID: NPA 2026-005 — the consultation closing 9 September 2026

Questions

Written by Chris Jones, Transport Canada-certified RPAS pilot and flight reviewer. Last reviewed 2 September 2026. Spot an error? Tell us and we'll fix it.