More than 131,000 businesses in Canada were lost in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic by the end of 2023, representing 11 percent fewer businesses, according to the Industry Department’s latest annual Key Small Business Statistics report. Among those lost, more than 125,600 were small businesses, defined as firms with 1 to 99 paid employees.
The latest report, released in March, showed that Canada had a total of 1,095,251 businesses of all types and sizes in December 2023. This represents a net loss of 131,203 compared with the 1,226,454 figure in December 2019 indicated in the report released in 2020, as first reported by Blacklock’s reporter.
Small businesses, which account for around 98 percent of all business, were hit the hardest. There were 1,074,939 such firms in December 2023, a net loss of 125,632 compared with the 1,200,571 figure in December 2019.
The most dramatic collapse fell on Canadian retailers in 2020. April that year, the first month of the pandemic, saw a 26.4 percent plummet in retail sales compared to the previous month, falling from $47.1 billion to $34.7 billion.
A Bank of Canada probe into the number of business closures during the reopening phase of the pandemic indicated that around half of the food and retail businesses shuttered during the April 2021 lockdown remained closed by the end of that phase. Titled “Business Closures and (Re)Openings In Real Time Using Google Places,” the bank’s report termed the novel phenomenon “business hibernation.”
Tracking 12,976 businesses across Toronto, Vancouver, and Ottawa, the study looked at bars, restaurants, shops, nightclubs and motels that had been subject to lockdown orders in April and May 2021.
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“About half of businesses recorded as temporarily closed in May had reopened by the end of September,” the study said, adding that 40 percent were “still hibernating” and 10 percent were “closed for good.”
Google Places, the database behind Google Maps, was used to compute reliable rates of business exit, temporary closures, entry, and reopening in a timely manner for customer-facing industries, the report said.
