Unpredictability of lockdowns stresses non-essential retailers
Trinh Ngo misses the days when her two Juxtapose gift and home goods stores would be teeming with customers sniffing candles and testing hand lotions.
The Toronto stores, which are temporarily closed while the city and three nearby regions remain under stay-at-home orders from the province, have been operating through curbside pickup for months and sometimes only eke out $50 a day in sales.
Even more stressful for Ngo is the anxiety of not knowing what’s next.
“We might open. We might not. It is very up in the air and everything is possible,” said Ngo. “If this keeps going I don’t know how long I’ll survive.”
Non-essential retailers in Toronto and neighbouring Peel Region have been restricted to curbside pickup for more than 12 weeks, having moved into Ontario’s “grey” or lockdown stage a month before the entire province was placed under a stay-at-home advisory on Dec. 26. The restrictions are now lifted in the majority of areas, but York Region and Toronto and Peel are still shut down.
Small business owners say reopenings might be short-lived and the unpredictability they’ve lived with for close to a year now won’t go away any time soon.
“I’m constantly just scrambling, because are we going to open next week or are we not?” said Ngo.
At least 58,000 of them have already closed during the pandemic, said the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses, which represents at least 110,000 small businesses across the country.
It estimates 181,000 more small businesses are at risk of closing before the end of the pandemic, putting 2.4 million jobs at risk.
However, small business owners are split on what should be done about restrictions.
About 43 per cent of the 4,701 small business owners CFIB surveyed in January want restrictions to be loosened to allow for reopening, 22 per cent think they need strengthening to protect people and 26 per cent believe public health officials have struck the right balance with their current measures.