Golden West Business Commentator Paul Martin
The word recession has been thrown around a lot lately in Canada. The country just completed a second consecutive quarter with negative growth.
Golden West Financial Expert Paul Martin says calling this a recession would be overstating the issue.
"The numbers suggest that we are skating on the edge of a recession both nationally and provincially. There maybe a difference between the two. The economists at TD Bank had just issued a report saying that Saskatchewan will have growth this year of two tenths of one percent, so that's positive. The official definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth, but if we do have a recession, it'll be quite modest."
Martin says the economic climates in other provinces are hurting the economy.
"Clearly Alberta is hurting. Alberta has real challenges simply because their reliance on the oil patch, and we all know the story on oil and how the price has dropped. Here in Saskatchewan, we're not feeling it as bad because we're more diversified. Newfoundland is also in a negative position, because they're so reliant on oil. So what's pulling down the country is Alberta and Newfoundland."
Martin says that there isn't much to worry about if Canada does fall into a recession.
"Here's the reality, it takes 180 days, 2 consecutive quarters to create the official term of recession. That means that if Canada or Saskatchewan, for example, were in a recession, for the first two quarters of this year, that means that the recession started last December or January. We should think about what we did for the last 180 days, because if we were in a recession and that's the way we conducted ourselves, as if there wasn't one, and all still made it out the other end."
Martin says that Saskatchewan has had some significant growth over the last decade and if we do face some red numbers that it would be pretty modest.