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Canada this year will only see “a modest acceleration in non-energy export growth,” according to Jesse Edgerton, an economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York. He cited suppliers who have lost orders through the oil shock and “the decline in competitiveness” against other nations.

Canada’s dollar has also crept back into the picture as an obstacle, with Poloz saying its recent rally was looking to be a bit too much. The currency is the third-best performer against the U.S. dollar over the last three months with a 2.3 per cent gain.

The problem is that manufacturing output has gone sideways for more than two years and is a smaller part of the economy, making it harder to drive future growth. Manufacturing, like the country’s battered energy industry, may not be ready deliver a huge jolt of momentum.

“We wouldn’t expect manufacturing to be a significant driver of growth,” Andrew Grantham, an economist at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in Toronto, said in an e-mail. “More investment is needed to raise capacity before production can increase much further,” he said. “A lot of the new investment will likely be headed to the U.S.”

Bloomberg News