Globe and Mail - Global headwinds threaten Canadian recovery
Canadians should brace for months, possibly years, of tepid growth that for many will feel like the brutal recession never ended. While the most dire of scenarios would see the global economy plunged back into a slump, the most likely outlook is that Canada is held back by a weak U.S. recovery and a European debt crisis that refuses to go away and threatens to stall the continent’s economies for an extended period.
“I don’t see a crisis again, and I’m not even sure I see a double-dip,” said Christopher Ragan, an economics professor at Ď㽶ĘÓƵ in Montreal who was a guest academic at the Finance Department for 18 months that included the 2009-10 recession. “But what’s almost as bad, frankly, is just chugging along at, say, 1.5-per-cent growth. That’s growth, but meanwhile the labour force is growing at 1 per cent. So that means unemployment starts to rise.”
