Canada’s Economy to Continue Experiencing Slow Growth in 2018

By Macdonald Laurier Institute —— Bio and Archives August 10, 2018

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OTTAWA, ON The Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Leading Economic Indicator (LEI), a tool designed to predict changes in the Canadian business cycle, increased by 0.2 percent in June. This follows two consecutive gains of 0.1 percent.

The slight improvement in growth largely originated in the housing index

Overall, seven of the ten components posted modest gains, two were unchanged and one decreased. “The slight improvement in growth largely originated in the housing index,” says MLI Munk Senior Fellow Philip Cross, the author of the LEI . The housing index rose by 0.5 percent after five consecutive declines following a tightening of mortgage lending regulations took effect in January of this year. However, the Bloomberg index of consumer sentiment continued to erode, down 1.4 percent as US tariffs on some Canadian metals exports took effect. This contributed to the sluggish rise of the LEI. “The slow growth of the overall index points to continued modest gains in the Canadian economy in the second half of the year.”