Maybe it’s his job to prepare us for the worst, but Canada’s chief central banker, Tiff Macklem, has warned of a long, slow recovery as successive rounds of COVID-19 lead to a “scarring” of the domestic and world economy.
After what some see as a false dawn this summer as the economy resurged, Macklem, governor of the Bank of Canada, and his senior deputy, Carolyn Wilkins, offered a gloomy outlook for an economy that they say is unlikely to get back on track until 2023.
Not only that, but jobs — hit harder in this recession than the last one — are disproportionately affecting Canadians with the lowest wages. While 425,000 jobs disappeared following the 2008 credit crisis, this time around, employment has been cut by 700,000.
And Macklem said some of those jobs may never come back.
“We’re going to get through this, but it’s going to be a long slog,” he said at a virtual meeting with financial reporters on Wednesday.
Good news? Lower for longer
The good news, if you could call it that, was that the central bankers have committed to keeping interest rates at current extraordinarily low levels until inflation climbs back to between two and three per cent, which they don’t foresee as likely for three years.
Forecasting the economy is always something of a guessing game, but Macklem and Wilkins said that this time there was added uncertainty because of not knowing what the novel coronavirus is going to do next.
The central bankers made it very clear that the current outlook depends on a number of assumptions about the path of the pandemic that may turn out to be better or worse than they currently foresee.
Among those assumptions is that the virus will return in succeeding waves, each less damaging than the last. Another is that a vaccine will not become widely available until 2022, a sobering estimate from sober central bankers that may be disheartening for those who had hoped U.S. President Donald Trump’s optimistic outlook of an October vaccine launch was more than just electioneering.
In the past, U.S. President Donald Trump — shown during a tour of the Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies’ Innovation Center in Morrrisville, N.C., in July — has suggested a vaccine would be available before the Nov. 3 election, but Canada’s sober central bankers are more pessimistic. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)
By promising that interest rates will stay low until 2023 — something central bankers call “forward guidance” — Macklem said he hopes businesses and consumers can confidently borrow for the medium term without fear that interest rates, and therefore loan repayments, will suddenly shoot up.
That’s good if you are buying a new stove but not for a home, or for a longer-term business investment. To influence those longer-term rates, the central bank has shifted the way it buys bonds as part of its quantitative easing plan that it initiated for the first time following the COVID-19 market disruption.
When the market crisis hit in early spring, the bank bought short-term bonds to help increase the amount of money in circulation, reassuring investors, Macklem said. But now that markets are working more normally, the Bank of Canada has reduced its monthly bond purchases from $5 billion to $4 billion and is switching to buying bonds that don’t mature for up to 30 years, in theory making longer-term loans cheaper.
Economy scarred by COVID-19
But while making borrowing cheap will help, the central bank worries that it won’t be enough to prevent the economy from being scarred by large employment losses as some people’s jobs never come back.
“We’ve assumed that a fraction of these people are permanent,” Wilkins said. “That’s because with COVID, not only is the recovery going to take longer so that there is more chance there’ll be scarring, it’s also the types of jobs created.”
As the economy rebounds, she said, the new jobs available will not match the skills of those who became unemployed. Among those worst hit will be women and young people.
“The effects of this pandemic have been extremely uneven,” Macklem said, directing reporters to a “particularly stunning” chart in the Monetary Policy Report, reproduced below, showing low-income workers have suffered more and their jobs have uniquely failed to recover.
Just as we saw during the long climb out of the last recession, replacing those jobs will require new private investment, some of it in entirely new sectors. But with so much uncertainty — and so much permanent structural change — Macklem said many companies will be hesitant to invest until things begin to stabilize.
“Clearly we are seeing a resurgence of the virus — it’s happening in Canada and it’s happening elsewhere,” he said.
Macklem’s current economic outlook is only a best guess based on so many unknowns. It may be that the virus gets even worse, he said, and it may be that a vaccine does not arrive until later than the bank has estimated or that it is ineffective.
But while the central bank is compelled to consider the bleakest case in its economic planning, Macklem does not exclude the possibility of a far less gloomy outcome, which he said would be “wonderful.”
“There’s certainly scenarios where a vaccine is available early next year and it proves effective, and we can deploy it at scale so that by the end of the year, we don’t need to physically distance anymore.”
And from a central banker, that is a positive ray of sunshine.
OTTAWA – Canada’s unemployment rate held steady at 6.5 per cent last month as hiring remained weak across the economy.
Statistics Canada’s labour force survey on Friday said employment rose by a modest 15,000 jobs in October.
Business, building and support services saw the largest gain in employment.
Meanwhile, finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing experienced the largest decline.
Many economists see weakness in the job market continuing in the short term, before the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts spark a rebound in economic growth next year.
Despite ongoing softness in the labour market, however, strong wage growth has raged on in Canada. Average hourly wages in October grew 4.9 per cent from a year ago, reaching $35.76.
Friday’s report also shed some light on the financial health of households.
According to the agency, 28.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 or older were living in a household that had difficulty meeting financial needs – like food and housing – in the previous four weeks.
That was down from 33.1 per cent in October 2023 and 35.5 per cent in October 2022, but still above the 20.4 per cent figure recorded in October 2020.
People living in a rented home were more likely to report difficulty meeting financial needs, with nearly four in 10 reporting that was the case.
That compares with just under a quarter of those living in an owned home by a household member.
Immigrants were also more likely to report facing financial strain last month, with about four out of 10 immigrants who landed in the last year doing so.
That compares with about three in 10 more established immigrants and one in four of people born in Canada.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information says health-care spending in Canada is projected to reach a new high in 2024.
The annual report released Thursday says total health spending is expected to hit $372 billion, or $9,054 per Canadian.
CIHI’s national analysis predicts expenditures will rise by 5.7 per cent in 2024, compared to 4.5 per cent in 2023 and 1.7 per cent in 2022.
This year’s health spending is estimated to represent 12.4 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product. Excluding two years of the pandemic, it would be the highest ratio in the country’s history.
While it’s not unusual for health expenditures to outpace economic growth, the report says this could be the case for the next several years due to Canada’s growing population and its aging demographic.
Canada’s per capita spending on health care in 2022 was among the highest in the world, but still less than countries such as the United States and Sweden.
The report notes that the Canadian dental and pharmacare plans could push health-care spending even further as more people who previously couldn’t afford these services start using them.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
As Canadians wake up to news that Donald Trump will return to the White House, the president-elect’s protectionist stance is casting a spotlight on what effect his second term will have on Canada-U.S. economic ties.
Some Canadian business leaders have expressed worry over Trump’s promise to introduce a universal 10 per cent tariff on all American imports.
A Canadian Chamber of Commerce report released last month suggested those tariffs would shrink the Canadian economy, resulting in around $30 billion per year in economic costs.
More than 77 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S.
Canada’s manufacturing sector faces the biggest risk should Trump push forward on imposing broad tariffs, said Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters president and CEO Dennis Darby. He said the sector is the “most trade-exposed” within Canada.
“It’s in the U.S.’s best interest, it’s in our best interest, but most importantly for consumers across North America, that we’re able to trade goods, materials, ingredients, as we have under the trade agreements,” Darby said in an interview.
“It’s a more complex or complicated outcome than it would have been with the Democrats, but we’ve had to deal with this before and we’re going to do our best to deal with it again.”
American economists have also warned Trump’s plan could cause inflation and possibly a recession, which could have ripple effects in Canada.
It’s consumers who will ultimately feel the burden of any inflationary effect caused by broad tariffs, said Darby.
“A tariff tends to raise costs, and it ultimately raises prices, so that’s something that we have to be prepared for,” he said.
“It could tilt production mandates. A tariff makes goods more expensive, but on the same token, it also will make inputs for the U.S. more expensive.”
A report last month by TD economist Marc Ercolao said research shows a full-scale implementation of Trump’s tariff plan could lead to a near-five per cent reduction in Canadian export volumes to the U.S. by early-2027, relative to current baseline forecasts.
Retaliation by Canada would also increase costs for domestic producers, and push import volumes lower in the process.
“Slowing import activity mitigates some of the negative net trade impact on total GDP enough to avoid a technical recession, but still produces a period of extended stagnation through 2025 and 2026,” Ercolao said.
Since the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement came into effect in 2020, trade between Canada and the U.S. has surged by 46 per cent, according to the Toronto Region Board of Trade.
With that deal is up for review in 2026, Canadian Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Candace Laing said the Canadian government “must collaborate effectively with the Trump administration to preserve and strengthen our bilateral economic partnership.”
“With an impressive $3.6 billion in daily trade, Canada and the United States are each other’s closest international partners. The secure and efficient flow of goods and people across our border … remains essential for the economies of both countries,” she said in a statement.
“By resisting tariffs and trade barriers that will only raise prices and hurt consumers in both countries, Canada and the United States can strengthen resilient cross-border supply chains that enhance our shared economic security.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
