Ammon News - Canada’s economy shrank by 5.4 per cent last year, making 2020 the worst year for the country’s economic output since record keeping began, official data from Statistics Canada showed.

The drop for the year was due to the shutdown of large parts of the economy in March and April during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, it revealed.

Canada’s economy contracted almost twice as much as the U.S. did during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the U.S. seeing far more cases per capita, as the U.S. economy shrank by 3.5 per cent last year.

"Provinces are gradually relaxing restrictions, the vaccine rollout has quickened, and case counts have trended lower," it said, adding that looking ahead, the near-term picture is brightening.