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Aaron Vincent Elkaim/The Globe and Mail
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is warning that more than 239,000 businesses could vanish because of COVID-19 as the new wave of restrictions and lockdowns leave a growing number of entrepreneurs considering giving up.
New research from the small-business lobby group based on a survey of 4,129 of its members last week found that nearly 18 per cent were considering bankruptcy or shutting their business down for good. Extended across the country’s 1.1 million businesses – the vast majority of which are small or medium-sized – the federation said that 181,000 firms could be under threat, according to adjusted projections. That’s in addition to the 58,000 fewer active businesses that Statistics Canada found in September, 2020, compared with September, 2019, according to its most recent business closing estimates.