Ironically, pandemics can be both good and bad for GDP. On one hand an economic lockdown means household and business expenditures are down while government spending (often deficit) might be up as governments provide needed economic assistance to those of us who became unemployed or underemployed.
Canada’s GDP per capita declined sharply in the second quarter of 2020 due to the Covid pandemic and lockdown. Statistics Canada data is used to show the trends in Canada GDP per capita from 2015 to the end of 2020. You can see that Canada’s GDP per capita has rebounded to levels reached in the 1st quarter of 2019. This suggests Canada remains economically resilient still in the midst of a pandemic economy.
What is missing is how Canadians are feeling about their well-being. The June 2020 national health and well-being survey shows that average life satisfaction of Canadians fell about 19% from 2019 levels. Well-being has clearly been negatively impacted