Food courts, commercial property and public transit to suffer as Canadian economy transforms in eight key ways
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Down: Department stores, secondary and tertiary malls and high-density commercial property.
3. How we watch
The move of culture online with nearly half of Canadians saying they won’t attend large events such as concerts or sports until a vaccine is widespread means more competition on the internet for eyeballs. Purveyors will increasingly personalize entertainment options, target advertising and augment sports offerings through gaming and streaming. Think how Twitch embedded a concert in a video game.
Up: Streaming platforms, star performers and athletes and virtual and augmented performances.
Down: Museums, art galleries, sports arenas and cinemas.
4. How we share
More bandwidth and data will also bring more hacks. Phishing sites surged 350 per cent between January and March as cyber criminals used fake Canada Revenue Agency sites to lure the unsuspecting. Data creation will grow to 175 zettabytes by 2025, 10 times the amount of data produced in 2017, according to a 2018 report by Seagate Technology Plc. With global internet usage jumping 40 per cent just between Feb. 1 and April 19, according to network technology company Sandvine Inc., think how much the Seagate forecast must be outdated.
Up: Cloud security, business continuity planning and distributed software protection.
Down: Communities with inadequate bandwidth, companies that are unable to capture and analyze consumer data.
5. How we travel
Staycations, or at least staying local, have become the mandated holiday adventures this year, with international travel not expected to hit pre-pandemic levels until 2024. However, contrary to RBC’s standpoint, this remains to be seen as it would seem natural after forced confinement that vacationers will flock to jets once a vaccine lands, just to get somewhere new. Of course, after learning how infectious we all are at close range, in-flight face masks may become de rigeur, pandemic or not. One impact of staycations is the boom in cottage real estate and a central core exodus.
