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If the numbers are right and the forecasts are correct, COVID-19 has peaked in much of Canada. This is good news, although what it means for the long-term economy is uncertain. A country cannot shut down trade and industry, close shops, restaurants, bars, theatres and spectator sports without a loss of jobs, income and capital. If this goes on – even intermittently – until there is a vaccine, it threatens economic ruin.

The danger is a long, neutron winter in which things are standing but little is stirring. We’re afraid to travel, fly, shop and dine out as we did in those sepia-soaked days before the contagion, some six weeks ago.

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It is this grim season of despair that compels us to model the recovery as we do the disease. It is the prospect of devastation so great – see the collapsing oil industry in Alberta – that makes us explore new ways of thinking.

A wise government makes contingency plans. This explains why Catherine McKenna, minister of Infrastructure and Communities, says she is “reading up” on Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal. She thinks we can learn something from the 1930s.