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OTTAWA -- Statistics Canada says the country's merchandise trade deficit with the rest of the world narrowed to $901 million in December from $1.7 billion the previous month.
But the decline was mostly on the imports side, which decreased 2.8 per cent to $38.5 billion.
The agency says exports continued to be soft, dropping a further 0.9 per cent to $37.6 billion. Exports were even weaker in volume terms, which has a more direct correlation to economic output, falling 2.1 per cent.
The agency says exports to the United States fell four per cent to $27.6 billion, mainly due to lower shipment of motor vehicle parts.
As a result, Canada's long-standing trade surplus with its largest and nearest trading partner closed to $3.5 billion from $3.8 billion in November...
A rise in exports and lower imports of oil helped push the U.S. trade deficit to its narrowest point in nearly three years in December, suggesting the economy did much better in the fourth quarter than initially estimated.
The country’s trade gap narrowed to $38.5-billion during the month, the Commerce Department said on Friday. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected a deficit of $46-billion...
...Friday’s data showed U.S. exports surged by $8.6-billion during the month, boosted by sales of industrial supplies, including a $1.2-billion increase of non-monetary gold.
In a reflection of America’s current boom in the output of oil and natural gas, petroleum exports rose by nearly $1-billion during the month to a record high level.
A fall in petroleum imports led overall purchases from abroad to decline $4.6-billion in December. For the entire year, the country’s imports of crude oil fell to their lowest levels since 1997 in terms of volume.
For all of 2012, the U.S. trade gap fell by 3.5 per cent to $540.4-billion. Running trade deficits means the country bleeds dollars, so trade is still a drag on the U.S. economy. But rising exports are helping it to be less of a drag than in prior years...
I don't understand what "bullishness" you are referring to. The stock is trading about 25% below the price of two years ago. It just reported some seriously poor financials, and some output declines. However, if the stock trades below $28 it might be an interesting play given its huge reserves in the ground in a reasonably secure political jurisdiction...
Yes, but it is fluctuating around the $30 level for 2 years. With Brent above $110, they are only doing ok. What if Brent falls to $70-$80? A real possibility if everyone in the world starts using fracking. I read that China is trying to learn the technology.
No one will buy oil sands when that happens. Oil sands is a very risky business.
Yes, but it is fluctuating around the $30 level for 2 years. With Brent above $110, they are only doing ok. What if Brent falls to $70-$80? A real possibility if everyone in the world starts using fracking. I read that China is trying to learn the technology.
No one will buy oil sands when that happens. Oil sands is a very risky business.
Oil and gas in every form is a very risky business...
A thread for Canucks (and displaced Canucks), on a USA centric site, to watch the Canadian economy, and see if we really are all that independent from our cousins south of the border after all...
[As I like to remind my English-born mother-in-law, Canada will never be a truly independent nation until we get the Queen off our money ]
Three random items to start the confusion.
From the "Technically Canada Doesn't Have an Economy When There's No Hockey" file:
Things are pretty tough when an economy is so dependent on a bunch of overpaid, heavily padded, entertainers playing in taxpayer funded ice palaces. "The Canadian Economy" is thanking gawd they are finally back to work. Let's hope they keep giving 110% to make up for the lost time. And that Vancouver doesn't lose to Boston in the Cup final again. Or the next round of Vancouver riots will subject us to more "broken window" economic theory than we really need
The Canadian economy expanded at its fastest pace in more than half a year, but the bigger picture is still one of slow growth.
The country’s gross domestic product rose 0.3 per cent in November, Statistics Canada said Thursday, its strongest showing in seven months as auto makers and oil firms ramped up activity...
...In Canada, the goods side of the economy led the better-than-expected monthly growth. Natural resources registered a bounce in the month, climbing 0.8 per cent on increases in crude petroleum extraction and mining. Among manufacturers, auto output revved up and so did primary metal production.
Construction activity was flat in the month – reflecting a drop in residential construction. Accommodation and food services declined amid fewer foreign tourists,while the arts-and-entertainment sector “continued to reel from the hockey strike,”...
It's official. The Canadian economy really does depend on ice hockey (and the related beer sales) after all...
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's economy bounced back from a year-end slump in January thanks to factories, mines and the return of professional ice hockey, but growth still looks too weak to match the central bank's upbeat outlook and interest rates are unlikely to budge until 2014.
Gross domestic product expanded by 0.2 percent in the month, Statistics Canada said on Thursday, following the weakest two quarters since the 2008-09 recession and a 0.2 percent contraction in December.
A comeback in the manufacturing sector helped spark the turnaround, along with strength in the mining and energy sectors and the delayed start of the country's beloved hockey season after National Hockey League players and owners settled a months-long labor dispute...
...The mining, quarrying and oil and gas extraction industry expanded 0.2 percent, while the arts and entertainment sector got a one-time boost of 4.1 percent as Canadians flocked to hockey arenas and sports pubs after the NHL labor dispute ended.
Players and owners reached a deal in January to end a four-month lockout of players. Canada has NHL teams in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.
With the Wildrose Alliance Party of Alberta surging in the polls, the tax subsidy party might just be coming to an end for Minhas Craft Brewery -- Alberta's "fake" Canadian beer company.
Minhas Craft Brewery thrives on a PR strategy in which it positions itself as a hometown David going up against a pair of ruthless, foreign-owned Goliaths in the form of Labatt and Molson.
Indeed, company co-owner Ravinder Minhas loves to play the victim card. And why not? By doing so, he receives a tax subsidy under Alberta's deeply flawed small brewer tax program. In 2010, that subsidy amounted to $5.6 million.
The program was meant to usher in an environment that allows for local craft breweries to flourish; alas, the precise opposite has occurred.
However, while Ravinder Minhas likes to position himself as the nitty-gritty all-Canadian little guy taking on the big bad world, the reality is something else entirely.
For starters, as previously reported here, all the Minhas brewing jobs are actually located in Monroe, Wisconsin. That wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that Minhas has its beer taxed at a lower rate than the big breweries (which actually employ Canadians.)
Translation: The Alberta government is essentially subsidizing U.S. brewing jobs with taxpayer money.
It also turns out that all of Minhas's trademarks are registered to a Barbados-based company; Minhas is apparently funneling all his profits from the Alberta tax subsidy into an offshore tax-sheltered haven.
The bottom line? Minhas beer is brewed in the U.S., subsidized in Alberta, and sheltered from taxes in Barbados.
With the Wildrose Alliance Party of Alberta surging in the polls, the tax subsidy party might just be coming to an end for Minhas Craft Brewery -- Alberta's "fake" Canadian beer company.
Minhas Craft Brewery thrives on a PR strategy in which it positions itself as a hometown David going up against a pair of ruthless, foreign-owned Goliaths in the form of Labatt and Molson.
Indeed, company co-owner Ravinder Minhas loves to play the victim card. And why not? By doing so, he receives a tax subsidy under Alberta's deeply flawed small brewer tax program. In 2010, that subsidy amounted to $5.6 million.
The program was meant to usher in an environment that allows for local craft breweries to flourish; alas, the precise opposite has occurred.
However, while Ravinder Minhas likes to position himself as the nitty-gritty all-Canadian little guy taking on the big bad world, the reality is something else entirely.
For starters, as previously reported here, all the Minhas brewing jobs are actually located in Monroe, Wisconsin. That wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that Minhas has its beer taxed at a lower rate than the big breweries (which actually employ Canadians.)
Translation: The Alberta government is essentially subsidizing U.S. brewing jobs with taxpayer money.
It also turns out that all of Minhas's trademarks are registered to a Barbados-based company; Minhas is apparently funneling all his profits from the Alberta tax subsidy into an offshore tax-sheltered haven.
The bottom line? Minhas beer is brewed in the U.S., subsidized in Alberta, and sheltered from taxes in Barbados.
Yes, there's a bit of a scandal "brewing" here...
The Alberta government spending is completely out of control and seems incapable of dealing honestly with any issue now. Reagan was probably right when he complained about government behaviour: "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.". The Alberta government has taken that to another dimension; they aren't waiting until it stops moving...
The Redford government has broken its promise to fix beer tax “loopholes” that undermine Alberta’s craft brewers and subsidize beer brewed outside the province, the Alberta Liberals alleged Thursday.
Liberal MLA Kent Hehr said the small brewer tax program allows for “egregious breaches,” such as a $5-million tax break to a company that brews most of its beer in Wisconsin.
Deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk promised to change the system last year, but has not done so...
...The small brewers aren’t the only ones lobbying; the tax breaks are so important that bigger companies have also hired some of Alberta’s most powerful lobbyists to advocate for them in the legislature’s backrooms.
Lobbyist registry records show Calgary’s Big Rock Brewery has veteran Alberta lobbyist Hal Danchilla of Canadian Strategy Group on the payroll, while Great West Brewing of Saskatoon has hired Randy Dawson of Navigator, who helped Premier Alison Redford win the spring 2012 provincial election.
Molson and Labatt have lobbyists working for them and Ravinder and Manjit Minhas of Wisconsin-based Mountain Crest Brewery have two: Alan Hallman and Elan MacDonald, a longtime Tory insider who most recently worked as Redford’s chief of staff and political adviser.
U.S. President Barack Obama has selected a partner at the investment firm of Goldman Sachs in Chicago to be the new U.S. ambassador to Canada, CBC News has learned.
Sources tell CBC News Network's Power & Politics that Bruce Heyman has accepted the job but still has to pass a vetting process in order to be be formally nominated. His confirmation will be up to the U.S. Congress...
...Well known as a high-level fundraiser to Barack Obama, Heyman and his wife Vicki, also a fundraiser, raised more than $1 million for Obama and were on his national finance committee.
Heyman runs the private wealth fund at Goldman Sachs and his areas of responsibility include parts of Canada...
I don't understand what "bullishness" you are referring to. The stock is trading about 25% below the price of two years ago. It just reported some seriously poor financials, and some output declines. However, if the stock trades below $28 it might be an interesting play given its huge reserves in the ground in a reasonably secure political jurisdiction...
Nothing like a bubblicious real estate market to make you think ongoing "wealth creation" while you're watching the hockey game and drinking Molson's is the natural state of affairs...
They’ve been known to get pretty excited when a new, big-name discount retailer comes to town, but thanks to a booming housing sector, Canadians are more affluent than their American neighbors.
At least for the moment, that is.
Canada’s net worth was at a healthy 648% of gross domestic product in the final quarter of 2012, according to a report from independent economic research firm Capital Economics, which has gained something of a profile for its bearish views on Canada’s economy, and particularly its housing market.
By contrast, U.S. net worth was a more modest 550% in the same period.
The catch is that Canadians’ wealth advantage is built mostly on the big run-up in housing prices in recent years, and that’s a very shaky foundation, at least from Capital Economics’ point of view.
The firm has been forecasting for some time now an overall reduction of 25% in Canadian house prices to bring the ratio of house prices to per-capita income back to historic norms. If that happens, Canadians may have to give up their bragging rights in the North American wealth sweepstakes.
Capital Economics’ report said the key explanation for the gap seems to be the downturn in the U.S. housing market, which has coincided with a boom in Canada’s.
“Before that, net worth in both countries had been extremely close for more than a decade,” it said...
...Based on the ratio of house prices-to-per-capita incomes, U.S. housing is currently about 20% undervalued relative to its long-run average, while Canadian housing appears to be more than 30% overvalued, Capital Economics said...
The World Bank’s record-setting sanction against SNC-Lavalin Inc. has resulted in another setback for the embattled Montreal engineering giant, with the Canadian International Development Agency announcing that the punishment will also bar SNC from bidding on the agency’s projects.
A spokesman for CIDA said that companies bidding on the agency’s projects must prove they are not under sanction by groups such as the World Bank, which last week announced that it barred SNC-Lavalin Inc. and 100 of its subsidiaries for a decade. The World Bank sanction, which was part of a settlement with SNC, stemmed from an alleged conspiracy in Bangladesh, where company officials were accused of trying to secure a $50-million consultancy contract for a new bridge by bribing the then-communications-minister...
Canada's parliamentary budget watchdog said in its latest report that the Canadian government is on track to balance the books by 2015.
Canada’s budget watchdog, long a thorn in the side of the Conservative government, said Monday in its latest economic and fiscal outlook that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is indeed on track to balance Ottawa’s books by 2015, as he promised in the 2013 budget.
The watchdog—led by Kevin Page until his departure in late March, and now headed on an interim basis by the parliamentary librarian—nonetheless maintained that economic growth in Canada is tepid at best and that the Bank of Canada won’t raise its key interest rate until mid-2015.
Canada’s parliamentary budget office projects Canada’s real gross domestic product to advance 1.5% in 2013, which is unchanged from its last outlook released last October.
The latest predictions for Canadian growth in 2013 from both the Bank of Canada and the International Monetary Fund are similar, and the watchdog Monday noted that private-sector economists have in recent months revised downward their GDP forecasts to bring those more in line with the watchdog’s October forecast.
Unlike Canada’s central bank, though, the parliamentary budget office doesn’t see a rebound in Canadian growth next year. It’s projecting growth of 1.9% in 2014 and 2.7% in 2015, on its view that the Canadian government’s spending-restraint program will act “as an additional drag on economic growth and job creation” for the foreseeable future.
The Bank of Canada sees growth of 2.8% in 2014 and 2.7% in 2015.
Canada’s economy faces other stiff headwinds, from over-indebted consumers, a softening housing market and weak demand abroad for Canadian-made goods.
The watchdog said its view that the Canadian government remains on track to balance its budget in 2015 is based on anticipated increases in payroll taxes and its assumption that the government won’t exceed planned spending.
It estimates that the federal budget deficit hit 25 billion Canadian dollars ($24.58 billion) in the fiscal year just ended on March 31, and expects the shortfall to shrink to C$17.4 billion in fiscal 2014 before hitting a small surplus in the fiscal year beginning April 1, 2015.
You are (I think) joking, but a good jest has within it a grain of truth.
My understanding of Canada is very limited, but I understand it to be a Social Market Economy run by a parliamentary democracy with a structure and value system that would indeed fit very well in Europe. In addition, it also has prodigious amounts of natural resources, which make it easier for it to absorb exogenous shocks, and geographic isolation that reduces the requirement for military spending. I don't know if it is more "German," but it certainly is in an enviable position when viewed from a germanic perspective, and probably offers a lot of the benefits of being in Europe, but with few of the downsides.
Canada's parliamentary budget watchdog said in its latest report that the Canadian government is on track to balance the books by 2015.
Canada’s budget watchdog, long a thorn in the side of the Conservative government, said Monday in its latest economic and fiscal outlook that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is indeed on track to balance Ottawa’s books by 2015, as he promised in the 2013 budget.
The watchdog—led by Kevin Page until his departure in late March, and now headed on an interim basis by the parliamentary librarian—nonetheless maintained that economic growth in Canada is tepid at best and that the Bank of Canada won’t raise its key interest rate until mid-2015.
Canada’s parliamentary budget office projects Canada’s real gross domestic product to advance 1.5% in 2013, which is unchanged from its last outlook released last October.
The latest predictions for Canadian growth in 2013 from both the Bank of Canada and the International Monetary Fund are similar, and the watchdog Monday noted that private-sector economists have in recent months revised downward their GDP forecasts to bring those more in line with the watchdog’s October forecast.
Unlike Canada’s central bank, though, the parliamentary budget office doesn’t see a rebound in Canadian growth next year. It’s projecting growth of 1.9% in 2014 and 2.7% in 2015, on its view that the Canadian government’s spending-restraint program will act “as an additional drag on economic growth and job creation” for the foreseeable future.
The Bank of Canada sees growth of 2.8% in 2014 and 2.7% in 2015.
Canada’s economy faces other stiff headwinds, from over-indebted consumers, a softening housing market and weak demand abroad for Canadian-made goods.
The watchdog said its view that the Canadian government remains on track to balance its budget in 2015 is based on anticipated increases in payroll taxes and its assumption that the government won’t exceed planned spending.
It estimates that the federal budget deficit hit 25 billion Canadian dollars ($24.58 billion) in the fiscal year just ended on March 31, and expects the shortfall to shrink to C$17.4 billion in fiscal 2014 before hitting a small surplus in the fiscal year beginning April 1, 2015.
I am not sure there is an equivalency here but everytime the US has "balanced their books" it resulted in a depression/major recession.
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