OTTAWA – A new report says Canadians will be fighting to recoup what they lost during the recession for several years.
The analysis from Dale Orr Economic Insight shows that even by 2014, Canada’s economy won’t have totally recovered from where it might have been had the downturn not happened.
Orr says the size of Canada’s economy will only be about 95 per cent of its potential in 2014.
He estimates gross domestic product per person, the best measure of Canadians’ standard of living, has contracted by 4.3 per cent to $38,100 in the current third quarter of 2009 from $39,760 in 2007.
It will take until 2012 before Canadian per-capital GDP recovers to the 2007 levels in real terms after accounting for inflation, and several more years before they get to levels they would have achieved had the downturn not occurred.
The bleak picture comes as new jobless numbers from the U.S. indicates the economy there is still months away from stabilizing, much as Canadian employment data next week is expected to show.
