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The Canadian economy, left for dead just a few short months ago, has come back to life … if barely.

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Philip Cross: Total borrowing in Canada across all categories increased by $77.9 billion last year, more than the $71.6 billion additional load we took on during the 2009 recession

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Real GDP inched ahead at a 0.8 per cent annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2015, and while the imploding energy sector had its thumbprints all over the place (especially in the continued retrenchment in total business spending) the gains in consumer spending, housing and net exports provided an offset.

In fact, the first inventory withdrawal in years (consistent with the falloff in imports) was also a factor in depressing headline growth, and outside of the destocking, real growth came in at a not-too-shabby 2 per cent annual rate which is double the pace recorded in the U.S. for Q4.

While we are still coming off a brutal year in which real GDP growth slowed to 1.2 per cent for all of 2015 — even with modest upward revisions to prior quarters — or about half what we saw in 2014, the reason why this is still not dubbed a recession is because real consumer spending in Q1 was +0.6 per cent at an annual rate, +1.9 per cent in Q2, +2.2 per cent in Q3, and +1.0 per cent in Q4.