Business
COVID response closed more Canadian businesses than 2008 financial crisis: gov’t report

From LifeSiteNews
StatsCan revealed that they are witnessing an increase in ‘zombie businesses,’ a phenomenon which occurs when owners never file for bankruptcy but simply walk away from their business.
Statistics Canada has revealed that more businesses closed as a result of the COVID-induced economic downturn than the 2008 financial crisis.
On October 25, Statistics Canada reported that the COVID-19 “pandemic” caused a record number of small businesses to shut down, with many owners never filing for bankruptcy but instead simply walking away from their companies, resulting in a large uptick in a phenomenon called “zombie businesses,” according to information obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter.
“This finding represents a larger increase than observed during the 2008 financial crisis when the exit rate increased by one percentage point,” wrote analysts.
The 2007- 2008 financial crisis, also called the Global Financial Crisis, is considered the most severe worldwide economic crisis since the Great Depression of 1929.
Business exits refer to the permanent closure of a business and can occur without a formal process, meaning owners can walk away from their businesses without declaring bankruptcy.
According to StatsCan, exits increased at the same time as bankruptcies fell, which is partly because courts were closed due to COVID lockdowns.
However, analysts noted that exits did not appear in bankruptcy court statistics, adding, “Formal insolvencies are not the whole story. Formal insolvency is but one path a business in distress may take.”
“The COVID-19 pandemic had a substantial impact on business dynamics leading to the temporary or permanent closure of many businesses,” analysts continued.
According to a Department of Industry estimate, Canada had 1,198,632 small businesses before COVID lockdowns. While the number has been revealed to have decreased drastically since then, federal agencies have failed to record comprehensive figures on the economic impact of COVID lockdowns and regulations.
“In my view there are hundreds of thousands of zombie businesses, businesses that are essentially dead but haven’t finalized the closure process altogether,” Dan Kelly, CEO of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, testified at 2020 hearings of the Senate national finance committee. “We are seeing greater numbers of business failures that actually haven’t been reported. We’re only at the tip of the iceberg.”
According to a 2022 Bank of Canada survey, only an estimated half of businesses reopened after being closed by COVID lockdowns. The research tracked 12,976 businesses throughout Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa including bars, restaurants, shops, nightclubs and motels, which were locked down by COVID regulations in April and May 2021.
“Half of businesses recorded as temporarily closed in May had reopened by the end of September,” the Bank reported. “Forty percent were still hibernating. Ten percent were closed for good.”
Statistics Canada’s report comes as Liberals MPs recently opted for a closed-door review by Minister of Health advisers of how the Canadian government handled the COVID-19 “pandemic” instead of launching a public inquiry.
In recent months, numerous reports have emerged revealing the Trudeau government’s mismanagement during the COVID-19 “pandemic.”
In a 2021 report Pandemic Preparedness, the Auditor General revealed that the cabinet was “not adequately prepared.”
Furthermore, Lessons Learned From The Public Health Agency Of Canada’s COVID-19 Response, an internal audit, condemned managers for “confusion,” “limited public health expertise” and “no clear understanding” of how to compile critical data.
Additionally, former Finance Minister Bill Morneau declared that spending programs to tackle COVID were prolonged and led to inflation under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s leadership.
During the so-called COVID-19 pandemic, the Trudeau government issued billions to Canadians who claimed they needed Canadian Emergency Response Benefits (CERB) as they were not permitted to work under COVID regulations.
Recently, the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA) has worked to take back the $3.2 billion from Canadians who filed for and were given CERB despite not being eligible to receive it. However, many are fighting in court to keep their government payments.
Business
Cannabis Legalization Is Starting to Look Like a Really Dumb Idea

Back in March 2024, I wrote about some early indications that Canada’s legalization of cannabis was, on balance, causing more harm than good. Well it looks like we’ve now moved past “early indications” and entered the “nervously searching for the exit” stage.
The new concerns follow the recent release of a couple of groundbreaking Canadian studies: Cannabis Use Disorder Emergency Department Visits and Hospitalizations and 5-Year Mortality which found evidence relating cannabis use to early death, and Convergence of Cannabis and Psychosis on the Dopamine System which describes a possible biological mechanism linking cannabis use to psychosis.
Canadian governments had very little moral liability for the medical consequences of cannabis use before they legalized it in 2018. However, legalization predictably led to a near doubling of consumption. In 2012, according to Statistics Canada, just 12.2 percent of Canadians 15 and over had used cannabis in the previous 12 months. By 2022, that number had climbed to 22 percent – representing nearly seven million Canadians. Cases of cannabis use disorder (CUD) treated in Ontario hospitals increased from just 456 in 2006 to 3,263 in 2021.
The government’s decision to legalize the drug¹ has arguably placed millions of additional people at risk of serious health outcomes.
Let’s take a look at the new evidence. The mortality study used hospital care and mortality data for more than eleven million Ontario residents. The researchers were given meaningful access to raw data from multiple government sources and were apparently compliant with all appropriate privacy regulations. They tracked 107,103 individuals who, between 2006 and 2021, were treated in an Ontario hospital for cannabis use disorder.
The main control group used for statistical comparison was all Ontarians. And the secondary control group was made up of individuals with incident hospital-based care for other substance use disorders, like alcohol, opioids, stimulants.
The primary outcome tracked by the study was all-cause mortality. The secondary outcome was mortality subdivided into alcohol poisoning, opioid poisoning, poisoning by other drugs, trauma, intentional self-harm, cancer, infection, diseases of the circulatory system, respiratory system, and gastrointestinal system.
The researchers adjusted for age, sex, neighborhood income quintile, immigrant status, and rurality (urban vs rural residence). They also controlled for comorbid mental health and care for substance use during the previous 3 years.
In other words, this looks like a well-constructed retrospective study based on excellent data resources.
What did they discover? People who received hospital-based care for cannabis use disorder were six times more likely to die early than the general population. And those CUD-related deaths lead to an average 1.8 life-years lost. After adjusting for demographic factors and other conditions, the added risk of early death was still three times greater than the general population. (Although people with CUD incidents were less likely to die young than those with other substance abuse disorders.)
CUD incidents were associated with increased risks for suicide (9.7 times higher), trauma (4.6 times higher), opioid poisoning (5.3 times higher), and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases (2 times higher).
The Convergence of Cannabis and Psychosis study was performed in and around London, Ontario. This one is a bit beyond my technical range, but they claim that:
Elevated dopamine function in a critical SN/VTA subregion may be associated with psychosis risk in people with CUD. Cannabis was associated with the hypothesized final common pathway for the clinical expression of psychotic symptoms.
Which does indicate that there may be more connecting cannabis to overall harm than just social or economic influences.
I’m not suggesting that the government should restore the original ban on cannabis. Like alcohol prohibition, the moment when that might have been possible is now long past. But I am wondering why politicians find it so difficult to wait for even minimal scientific evidence before driving the country over the cliff?
Business
‘Experts’ Warned Free Markets Would Ruin Argentina — Looks Like They Were Dead Wrong

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
The current state of Argentina’s economy is a far cry from what “experts” predicted when they warned that President Javier Milei’s pro-free market leadership would devastate the country.
The chainsaw-wielding libertarian rose to power on promises to slash government spending, implement free-market policies and lift strict currency controls to rescue a nation crippled by inflation, debt and entrenched poverty. Though the pundit class warned that Milei’s policies would spark an economic collapse, the results so far have been a rebuke to those warnings.
Just days before the November 2023 presidential election, 108 economists from around the world signed an open letter claiming that Milei’s “simple solutions” were “likely to cause more devastation in the real world in the short run, while severely reducing policy space in the long run.”
“His policies are poorly thought through. Far from building a consensus, he would struggle to govern,” The Economist’s editorial board wrote in a September 2023 piece describing “Javier Milei’s dangerous allure.”
Well over a year into Milei’s presidency, Argentina is showing its strongest economic performance in years. The country’s gross domestic product (GDP) jumped 7.7% in April compared to the same month in 2024, far exceeding expectations.
The GDP is expected to rise by 5.2% in 2025, compared to declines of 1.3% in 2024 and 1.9% in 2023, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Inflation, a long-standing hallmark of Argentina’s economic dysfunction, dropped to 1.5% between April and May, reaching a five-year low. Annual inflation has plunged from 160.9% in November 2023 — just before Milei took office — to 43.5% in May.
Meanwhile, poverty rates have also declined sharply, falling from 52.9% in the first half of 2024 to 38.1% in the second half of the year.
Argentina’s rental housing supply also increased by 212% between December 2023 and June 2024, after Milei repealed the country’s rent control laws, according to the Cato Institute.
“Against the background of a difficult legacy of macroeconomic imbalances, Argentina has embarked on an ambitious reform process, starting with an unprecedented upfront fiscal adjustment. Reforms have started to pay off. Inflation has receded and the economy is set for a strong recovery,” the OECD noted in its new analysis of the Argentinian economy. “Maintaining the reform momentum will be key to restore confidence, boost investment and productivity growth.”
Milei — a self-described anarcho-capitalist — has been an ardent supporter of President Donald Trump’s efforts to downsize the U.S. government, including the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) push to cut spending.
“I come from a country that bought all of those stupid ideas that went from being one of the most affluent countries in the world to one to one of the [poorest],” Milei said in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2024. “If you don’t fight for your freedom, they will drag you into misery … Don’t surrender.”
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