Recession in Canada, what recession?

[Abitibidoug]

I read or hear all these horror stories about how bad the recession is, and while I can’t speak for other countries, or other parts of Canada, here in Ontario things don’t seem that bad. Presently I am on a job that is taking me to different parts of this province and will tell of some of my observations. I spent 3 months in Ottawa, and saw a lot of help wanted, apply within signs at many businesses. The housing market there continues to do just fine with no drop in sales or prices. The same holds true of towns around Ottawa. For example, I saw a large subdivision of houses going up in the town of Arnprior, about 70 Km. west of Ottawa. By the way, these houses weren’t small townhouses or semi-detached, but large monster homes. I’ve moved further west, and see new houses (again, big houses) going up in the suburbs of Toronto, as well as in places further out like Hamilton, Brantford, or Barrie. After a brief pull back, house prices in the Toronto area are recovering from what seems like a minor bump rather than a major crisis. I’ve seen big houses going up in the north end of London, which supposedly has been hit hard by the slow down in the manufacturing sector, which is a large part of London’s economy. The same holds true for Kitchener-Waterloo area. About the only parts of Ontario that have felt a slowdown in the housing sector (and drop in prices) have been cities like Oshawa or Windsor that are heavily dependent of the struggling automotive sector. The same is true for northern towns like Iroquois Falls that are dependant on the struggling forestry sector. Otherwise all seems well.

Recently in the Blog section there was an article about planes sitting mothballed in the Arizona desert because of a slow down in air traffic. By contrast I heard Air Canada Jazz (regional services) recently hired metal workers straight out of college because they couldn’t find anyone experienced and unemployed with these skills. I also saw a lot of no vacancy signs on hotels in the cottage country part of Ontario, as well as a full parking lot and a large crowd of people going into Marineland, a tourist destination in Niagara Falls.

What’s going on here, is there a recession or not? Because Canada does a lot of trade with the United States, it is expected that a recession in the U.S. would cause one in Canada, as has happened before, but that doesn’t seem to be happening this time. Is it because Canada avoided the subprime crisis, or is it demographics at work? I read somewhere the baby boom lasted about 5 years longer in Canada than the U.S., so maybe that peak spending has a few years yet to go here. Any ideas or comments?

[pychen1993]

I guess it is attributed to Canadian immigration policy. Subprime is more or less a US phenomenon, but other countries like Japan, UK, etc. are still in recession. Plus oil is yet not too cheap.

[firehosereh]

It would be interesting to understand the impacts of the "US meltdown" on Canadian markets and further to that: If oil is going to take off again, would it not make sense to be a holder of a Canadian oil stock, like a Suncor Energy?

[bmx88]

It's hard to say, In BC, Canada there are far fewer jobs then their use to be for the kind of work I'm looking for.

If there are jobs that match what I want, they want to pay much less then the what should be market prices.

Yes, I agree the housing market here is booming again but is it going to last? I would really be interested in knowing if the market will continue to climb or not, but I do see the recession hitting here as well. I know auto sales here are way down.

[lattes]

I am in Toronto and things have slowed down, I have let go of about half my staff. Toronto actually has an unemployment rate over 10%, I think that overall Canada will weather this better than a lot of other countries but eventually things start to catch up with us. Without the US to buy our products we are in a VERY tough spot.