{"id":696153,"date":"2026-05-27T02:06:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T02:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/696153\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T02:06:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T02:06:11","slug":"canadas-active-business-count-falls-to-a-28-month-low","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/696153\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada\u2019s Active Business Count Falls To A 28-Month Low"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Canada just saw one of its biggest months on record for new businesses, but just as many shut down. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statcan.gc.ca\/en\/start\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Statistics Canada (StatCan)<\/a> data shows the number of active businesses fell in February, with the country seeing the fewest since October 2023, a 28-month low. This isn\u2019t a one-off issue: new firms over the past year have been almost entirely offset by closures, pushing the rolling 12-month net change close to zero for the first time since the start of the pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Canadian Active Business Count Falls To A 28-Month Low\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Canadian active businesses.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Source: StatCan; Better Dwelling. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Canada\u2019s active business count slipped 0.04% in February, falling by 392 firms to 935,791. It was the third straight monthly decline, leaving the country with 2,361 fewer firms than last year, down 0.25%. Despite having more people to serve, Canada now has the fewest active businesses since October 2023, a 28-month low.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Canada Is Seeing Businesses Close As Fast As They Open<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Canadian business openings vs closures, 12-month rolling sum. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Source: StatCan; Better Dwelling. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The slide isn\u2019t due to a lack of business openings\u2014those have been climbing. The latest data shows 46,785 businesses opened in February, up 6.4% (+2.82k) and the most ever reported in the month. In isolation, that looks like an entrepreneurship renaissance.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Unfortunately, the volume of businesses closing indicates this isn\u2019t a time to celebrate. Canada saw 46,736 businesses close in February, up 5.8% (+2.57k) from last year and also setting a record for the month. The volume of closures was within spitting distance of openings, helping to explain why active businesses are falling. Openings are showing growth, but with a near-identical volume of closures, this is just churn.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Canada\u2019s business churn is also getting hard to ignore. Over the 12 months ending in February, openings outpaced closings by just 28 businesses. Not 28,000, just twenty-eight. New firms are still being created, but the volume disappearing is nearly identical. The rolling 12-month net change is now effectively zero, a level not seen since the start of the pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Canada has plenty of new businesses opening. It also has nearly as many disappearing. That\u2019s not a boom\u2014it\u2019s an economy running hard to stand still.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Coincidentally, StatCan abruptly announced this morning that they would be discontinuing their analytical reports of the business counts. The data will continue to be updated, but it won\u2019t be shared though the agency\u2019s primary communication channels \u201cfor the public and media.\u201d Great timing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\n\tYou Might Also Like<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canada just saw one of its biggest months on record for new businesses, but just as many shut&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46],"class_list":["post-696153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}