Holding Their Own

Business people in this province demonstrated considerable financial acumen through the pandemic as they pivoted, coped or did what they had to do to survive. That agility is borne out in the 2021 mid-year report on just how many businesses opened, closed and were carrying on at the end of June.

StatsCan says we started this year with 24,500 operating businesses. By the mid=point of the year that had risen by 90.

To get there, though, we witnessed roughly 6,600 fresh start-ups, slightly more than 6,000 closures and the rest were what they describe as ‘re-opened’ meaning they had been closed or shuttered by health orders and, as those were lifted, the businesses were able to get rolling again.

On the national scene, the big story was the re-opening of tourism businesses. In many regions, they had been ordered to stop operating by public health orders but, by the beginning of summer, those regulations were being eased and that allowed operators to welcome customers once again as the number of functioning businesses in that market segment grew by roughly 45% from January to June.