It has definitely been an incredibly difficult year. Given that we are an organization that has done survey research for decades already, we were well positioned when the pandemic began to get to our membership quickly to really determine what the impact was and what was happening. I would even argue that we were probably the only organization that was able to do that as quickly as we did.
A lot of that research was used quite extensively within government, because there wasn't much other research happening at the time. With our average survey, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, we were getting 8,000 or 10,000 responses to a survey, which was more than enough to make sure it was representing what was actually happening. Even today, we're still getting about 4,000 to 6,000 responses to every survey.
Many times over the years, because we're an advocacy organization and people will suggest that maybe our research is biased, we have done much research to try to validate that it isn't. We have found that when our research is done in a different way by others, it is pretty much on par with the information we have. We've had government departments duplicate our research, because they didn't necessarily believe it at first, and then find the same thing that we found.
I would say it is not dubious. It's a fairly good reflection of what is happening out there in the small business landscape in Canada.