Article content

Canada’s economy could take 15 years to reinvent itself after manufacturing and service industries began to shrink in the wake of the financial crisis, Royal Bank of Canada CEO David McKay said.

Canada has seen a “fundamental restructuring”‘ of its export economy since losing more than 7,000 exporting companies to the U.S. when the country’s currency traded at par with the U.S. dollar following the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, McKay, 52, said today in a television interview on Bloomberg TV Canada. Heavy manufacturing and service industries were lost, and haven’t come back, he said.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Canada’s economy could take 15 years to ‘reinvent’ itself, warns head of Royal Bank of Canada Back to video

“So the economy has had to reinvent itself: create new customers and new markets with new products and new manufacturing capability,” McKay said. “That takes time. That can take a decade, that can take 15 years.”

McKay’s comments come after the Bank of Canada said Wednesday risks to the country’s inflation profile had “tilted somewhat to the downside” in the eight weeks since the central bank’s last set of forecasts. That was a departure from previous statements that described inflation risks as “roughly balanced,” and counters the bank’s long-held view that exports would lead the country out of its malaise.