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OTTAWA — You may want to hold your applause over Canada’s strong economic performance so far this year.

Sure, growth in the first quarter outperformed every three-month period over the past year and a half. And, yes, exports — particularly shipment of oil products to the United States — led the charge with a 1.5% gain.

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All the while, the federal government has continued to whittle down its budget deficit, and Ottawa still looks set to balance its books by 2015 — as promised — even as the global economy slumps along.

We can’t expect that kind of strength to persist for long

But the reality may not be as rosy. Some economists see the surprisingly strong 2.5% annualized growth between January and March, reported Friday by Statistics Canada, as unsustainable.

The hefty first-quarter pace in gross domestic product “was partly due to a one-off rebound in energy exports,” economists at Capital Economics in Toronto noted, which came after a revised 0.9% gain for the last three months of 2012.