COVID-19 lockdowns, not public anxiety, were to blame for the worst economic impacts,.Bank of Canada researchers said. Canadian consumers quickly overcame their fears of the disease and adapted to pandemic precautions, federal data showed..Evidence shows Canadians were “adapting to restrictions and becoming more familiar with new ways to consume, such as online shopping and curbside pickup” in the first year of the pandemic, said a Bank of Canada study: Covid-19 Containment And Consumption..According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the findings were drawn from credit and debit card transactions, which showed consumers “becoming less risk-averse to the virus” within months of the outbreak of the pandemic on March 11, 2020..However, successive government lockdowns were a “consistent drag on year over year spending growth,” said Consumption. “Interestingly the impact of volunteer physical distancing during the first wave also appears to have been more negative than during the second wave,” the report added..Researchers wrote this could be interpreted as households and firms adapting to the restrictions. “Factors such as pandemic fatigue, behavioural adaptation by firms and households to the new conditions or the adoption of more targeted government measures could have contributed to these findings.”.The data follows a 2021 report by the Department of Economics at Simon Fraser University, which found no evidence death rates were lowered by lockdowns. “The ineffectiveness of lockdown stems from voluntary changes in behaviour,” said the report Covid Lockdown Costs-Benefits: A Critical Assessment Of The Literature..The economists wrote that lockdown jurisdictions did not prevent non-compliance and non-lockdown jurisdictions benefited from voluntary changes in behaviour that mimicked lockdowns..“It is possible that lockdowns will go down as one of the greatest peacetime policy failures in Canada’s history,” they said..An initial lockdown order March 13, 2020 prompted the sharpest economic downturn since the 1981 recession. The Public Health Agency at hearings of the House of Commons health committee acknowledged it had no evidence repeated lockdowns were a net benefit..“The government apparently has the data to enforce border lockdowns and travel restrictions and quarantine people in hotels, you have that data, but you don’t have the data available that we can tell Canadians when life can go back to normal, Canadian businesses can reopen and Canadians can go back to work,” Conservative MP John Barlow (Foothills, Alta.) told a 2021 hearing..Matthew Horwood is the Parliamentary Bureau Chief of the Western Standard
