“The economy grew 1.4 per cent in 2016, also better than forecast as growth picked up from a weak 2015 that was punctuated by a brief recession.” (Even as late as its January Monetary Policy Report, the Bank of Canada had only forecast 1.3% growth.) This seems to put too bright a gloss on what was surely a disappointing year. In 2016, real GDP grew in the UK by 17%, in the euro area by 1.66% and in the US by 1.6%. So far on Trudeau’s watch we are falling behind both the Europe and the US, when in the Harper years we outperformed them.
Real gross domestic income for Canada was up by 0.6% in 2016, considerably better than the 0.3% forecast by the Bank of Canada. However, it shows that Canada’s terms of trade still deteriorated in 2016: our terms of trade index fell by 2.1% in 2016 after a 6.9% fall in 2015.