As of January 2020, in the heat of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Canadian economy had a total of 1.23 million private sector businesses. Out of which 1.2 million (97.9 percent) were small businesses. Statistics Canada projects the number of small businesses in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba to be over 370,000 as at 2021.
Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba collectively have over 300,000 small to medium scale businesses as at the beginning of 2020. It is noted that post covid numbers (2022) show an increase of over 23% of number of small businesses in these regions.