worse than 2020, a year in which most sectors encountered a once-in-a-lifetime economic slowdown. For example, Canadians — by which we mean individual consumers, businesses, and government agencies — typically register around 191,000 vehicles during the month of April. In April 2020, in the immediate weeks following mass closures across the country, Statistics Canada says only 47,508 vehicles were sold, a 75-per-cent drop from the norm.
The shocking result, which in hindsight shouldn’t have surprised anybody, was a sharp increase in demand following the spring slowdown. By June 2020, auto sales had more than tripled from April levels. By the end of the year, despite a March-May collapse, Canadians still registered 1.55 million vehicles.Although it’s not fair to compare 2022 to the best year ever, it’s also not terribly enlightening to compare 2022 to the worst year in a quarter-century, either.