If you’re like me, you read that and waited for the other shoe to drop. I expected the next line would tell me how much Canadians – especially unemployed and low-income Canadians – had suffered from the economic lockdowns governments imposed to slow the spread of the virus. Nope. The “extraordinary changes” were almost all to the good. Lower- and middle-income Canadians made more from federal pandemic support payments than they would have made had they stayed at work. “COVID-19 benefits outpaced earnings loses,” for most Canadians in the lower half of the income spectrum, StatsCan reports. We apologize, but this video has failed to load.