During the infamous 2020 lockdowns, Canada lost more than 131,203 small businesses, cabinet figures showed. Circumstances became so dire that one business group took suicide calls from desperate shopkeepers.

Annual Key Small Business Statistics from the Department of Industry counted fewer small and medium-sized businesses of all types, from 1,226,565 to 1,095,251.

The smallest of small shopkeepers, those with fewer than five employees, were hardest hit, reported Blacklock’s. “I’ve spent 26 years working with and for small businesses and have never seen anything like this,” testified one executive.

Statistics Canada earlier revealed that 47% of small businesses, with annual expenses falling under $1.5 million, incurred $60 billion in lost revenues during those lockdowns.

“This was due in part to successive waves of health restrictions,” said the report Borrowing, Repayments And Bankruptcies By Industry: Results From The Canada Emergency Business Account Program. 

In 2020, retailers, builders and manufacturers saw a roughly 25% drop in sales, while restaurateurs and hotelkeepers experienced a more significant 60% decrease. This marked the most dramatic collapse in sales nationwide since 1932.

“Basically sales dropped off a cliff,” Dan Kelly, CEO of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, said at the time. The first month of the pandemic, April 2020, saw a 26% drop in sales. 

“It has been soul-crushing for so many,” Kelly continued. “There are seasoned, experienced business owners who are now in tears.”

During testimony at the Commons finance committee, the CFIB president appeared devastated on taking suicide calls from members. 

“Just last week alone we’ve had five small business owners talking to us about suicide,” he said then. “That is how dark this has quickly become for so many small business owners.”

A 2022 Bank of Canada survey found that half of the businesses closed by pandemic lockdowns were still closed five months later, describing the phenomenon as “business hibernation.”

In April and May 2021, researchers monitored 12,976 businesses in Vancouver, Toronto, and Ottawa that were affected by lockdown orders, including bars, restaurants, shops, nightclubs, and motels. Half reopened by the end of September.

“Forty percent were still hibernating,” wrote researchers. “Ten percent were closed for good.”

Parliament tabled reprieve 16 days into the pandemic, approving $49.2 billion in loans to 898,271 businesses, of which $3.5 billion went to ineligible operators.

“Many of the businesses that applied for and received funding were in client-facing industries,” wrote analysts. It covered expenses including patio expansions, personal protective equipment and other pandemic-related needs. 

Of the borrowers only 6,343 filed for bankruptcy, said StatsCan. The agency figure is subject to increase by the December 31, 2026 deadline, as high as 10%, according to a prior CFIB report.

“We need to keep businesses going so they can keep employees on staff,” then-Finance Minister Bill Morneau said at the time. “We can’t know the full impact or the duration of the challenge we’re facing.”

He later acknowledged the feds splurged too much on pandemic aid. His successor ignored calls for an audit of the program.

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