Thousands of businesses no longer exist all due to the pandemic

BY SIMONE J. SMITH

I write this article with a heavy heart.

It has been one thing to watch people get sick, live in fear, deal with mental health challenges, and not have enough food to eat. It has been another thing watching people lose aspects of their lives that mean so much to them.

In a survey of 10,969 Canadian small businesses from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, about 22% of small businesses have had their revenue drop to $0 during the pandemic. Did you read that $0.00?

Let’s take even a closer look at how the lockdowns have affected small-and-medium sized Canadian businesses. A survey of 500 small-and-medium sized Canadian companies (conducted by KPMG, September 2020) found that over half of these enterprises are just focusing on surviving

The most recent survey by KPMG survey showed that nearly 40% of small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) worry that they won’t recover from the economic fallout of the pandemic.

Popular restaurants like Nando’s, the global chicken chain, closed 21 of its Canadian locations during the pandemic, including spots on Danforth, Beaches and Queen West. Another trendy restaurant that has had to close its doors is Friday Roots and Vibes. The former pop up-turned permanent restaurant that was a staple for fried chicken and live acts, closed its doors for good.

In this article, I really want to highlight the numbers, because for some reason, mainstream media only focuses on the rising number of cases, and not the rising number of loses that people are taking when it comes to their sources of income.

Most of these numbers are due to the stringent lockdowns that have fluctuated throughout the pandemic, which continue to weaken the Canadian economy.

According to Statistics Canada, in April, Canada recorded 88,187 business closures, that’s more than twice the 39,078 that shut down in the same month last year.

A survey by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business taken at the end of June found another 150,000 Canadians businesses, or 14% of the total, are at least somewhat considering bankruptcy or winding down their operations because of
COVID-19. For some business owners, they say it wasn’t the pandemic that killed their small businesses; it was actually the commercial taxes.

If we take a quick trip across the border, we will see quickly that things are not going so well over there either. The pandemic has closed some 3.3 million small businesses (at least temporarily) the sidelining of 440,000 African Americans was especially notable (Bloomberg Report).

African American owners have faced tougher struggles in keeping their businesses open, mostly due to the fact that many of their businesses were not seen as “essential.” While the unemployment rate amongst Caucasians fell to 12.4 % in May 2020, the jobless rate for African Americans rose slightly to 16.8% (Bureau of Labour Statistics). The disparities shine a light on racial inequalities that exist and cannot be ignored.

It is really unfortunate that through my research, I was unable to find more information on Canadian black business, and how they fared during this pandemic. It is the reason that the Canadian Black Chamber of Commerce has been actively building statistics on what is occurring with black businesses in Canada. It would be good to know exactly how our numbers compare to our brothers and sisters in the United States.