The study, “Canadian Consumers Adapt to COVID-19: A Look at Canadian Grocery Sales up to April 11,” highlights recent trends in consumer demand and sales using transaction data for grocery products. Retail grocery sales during the week ending March 21 rose 40 per cent compared with the same week a year earlier. Following the March spike, grocery store receipts continued to rise … Read more
Following a drop of over one million in March, employment fell by nearly two million in April, bringing the total employment decline since the beginning of the COVID-19 economic shutdown to over three million. In April, both full-time (-1,472,000; -9.7 per cent) and part-time (-522,000; -17.1 per cent) employment fell. Cumulative losses since February totalled 1,946,000 (-12.5 per cent) in full-time … Read more
Nationally, farmers expect to plant 3.3 per cent more acres of wheat to 25.4 million acres in 2020 compared with one year earlier. At the national level, farmers expect to seed fewer acres of canola in 2020 compared with one year earlier, decreasing 1.6 per cent to 20.6 million acres in 2020. Canadian farmers intend to plant 5.2 million acres of soybeans in 2020, down 8.7 per cent from 2019. The decrease in expected soybean … Read more
Total sales from the greenhouse, nursery, field cut flowers and sod industries increased 2.4 per cent from 2018 to $4.0 billion in 2019. Ontario accounted for the largest share of total sales (54.9 per cent), followed by British Columbia (22.3 per cent) and Quebec (12.1 per cent). Greenhouse products accounted for 79.2 per cent of total sales ($3.2 billion), up 2.8 per cent compared with 2018. This was … Read more
Canada’s merchandise exports fell 4.7 per cent to $46.3 billion in March, the lowest level since January 2018. Total imports declined 3.5 per cent to $47.7 billion, a level not observed since October 2017. Both exports and imports were down almost 10 per cent on a year-over-year basis. Canada’s trade deficit widened from $894 million in February to $1.4 billion in March. In real (or volumes) terms, March … Read more
Canada produced 22.4 million cubic metres (140.7 million barrels) of crude oil and equivalent products in February, up 9.8 per cent from February 2019, when newly introduced production limits reduced crude output in Alberta. The gain was mainly attributable to oil sands extraction, which includes crude bitumen and synthetic crude oil, up 10.5 per cent year over year to 14.1 million cubic metres. Heavy, light … Read more
In regards to health, for example, almost half of immigrants (49 per cent) reported that they were “very” or “extremely” concerned about their own health, compared with one-third (33 per cent) of the Canadian-born. Over half of immigrants (53 per cent) reported that they were “very” or “extremely” concerned about the possibility of civil disorder, … Read more
Flash estimates of gross domestic product (GDP) for March 2020 (-9 per cent) and the first quarter of 2020 (-2.6 per cent) were released by Statistics Canada on April 15. Following three months of growth, real GDP was essentially unchanged in February, as declines particularly in educational services, and disruptions in the transportation and warehousing sector stalled the economy. Excluding these two sectors, the … Read more
In order to better understand the impact of COVID-19 on businesses, employers and employees, communities and our economy, Statistics Canada and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce collaborated to launch the Canadian Survey on Business Conditions. Nearly one-third (32.3 per cent) of businesses who responded to the survey reported that their revenues from the first quarter of 2020 were down … Read more
A revised set of preliminary data on the number of confirmed novel COVID-19 cases reported by the provincial and territorial health authorities to the Public Health Agency of Canada is now available. The set covers the period from January 15 to April 26, 2020. This data set includes information for a total of 24,723 Canadians who tested positive for COVID-19 as of April 26, 2020. … Read more
