{"id":11765,"date":"2015-09-03T07:15:05","date_gmt":"2015-09-03T12:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11765"},"modified":"2015-09-03T07:15:05","modified_gmt":"2015-09-03T12:15:05","slug":"three-worrying-economic-trends-beyond-canadas-gdp-drop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11765","title":{"rendered":"Three Worrying Economic Trends Beyond Canada’s GDP Drop"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three Worrying Economic Trends Beyond Canada’s GDP Drop<\/a><\/h3>\n

New data confirms what 79 per cent of Canadians already felt.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The much anticipated\u00a0quarterly GDP numbers\u00a0are\u00a0out<\/a>, and StatsCan confirmed what 79 per cent of Canadians\u00a0already felt<\/a>\u00a0to be the case — Canada’s economy is in decline. A drop in economic activity of 0.1 per cent in the second quarter of 2015 officially tipped\u00a0Canada in recession territory (after a drop of 0.2 per cent in the first quarter).<\/p>\n

The dip in GDP is what’s making the headlines this week, but there are three other trends\u00a0in the\u00a0new data<\/a>\u00a0released by StatsCan that suggest the economic slowdown is here to stay. Indeed, as my colleague David Macdonald noted here, “recession is just the tip of Canada’s\u00a0economic iceberg.”<\/p>\n

1. Business investment is down for the third consecutive quarter<\/strong><\/p>\n

This decline comes on the heels of\u00a0a long post-recession period of weak business investment since early 2012. You may remember the former governor of the Bank of Canada, Mark Carney, famously\u00a0accusing companies of sitting on piles of“dead money”<\/a>\u00a0in the summer of 2012. A quick look at the statistics shows little has changed since.<\/p>\n

\"Business<\/p>\n

\n

Business investment in non-residential structures and machinery and equipment from 2010 to 2015, via StatsCan.<\/p>\n

\n

The problem is that without business investment, we can expect weaker job growth and a slower economy to continue.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Bank of Canada\u00a0cut its interest rate<\/a>\u00a0in January 2015 in an attempt to to encourage investment and boost the economy. Unfortunately,\u00a0all this seems to have done\u00a0is further distort real estate\u00a0markets, particularly in places like Vancouver where\u00a0housing affordability is reaching\u00a0record lows<\/a>.<\/p>\n

2. A number of key economic sectors are in decline, not just oil and gas<\/strong><\/p>\n

Over the last decade, Canada’s economy has become overly reliant on mining and oil exports. It’s not surprising that when the price of oil and minerals drops sharply, as it has over the last year, our resource sector would be hit hard. But the economic decline extends beyond mining, oil and gas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three Worrying Economic Trends Beyond Canada’s GDP Drop New data confirms what 79 per cent of Canadians already felt. The much anticipated\u00a0quarterly GDP numbers\u00a0are\u00a0out, and StatsCan confirmed what 79 per cent of Canadians\u00a0already felt\u00a0to be the case — Canada’s economy is in decline. A drop in economic activity of 0.1 per cent in the second […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[942,103,6315,1851,353,1264,1936,5499],"class_list":["post-11765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-bank-of-canada","tag-canada","tag-canadian-economy","tag-commodity-price-collapse","tag-gdp","tag-recession","tag-statistics-canada","tag-the-tyee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11765"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11766,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11765\/revisions\/11766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}