It’s troubling that we still refer to this as a “recovery” so long after the fact.

And as Bank of Montreal’s chief economist puts it, the “unluckiest” recovery ever.

We’re supposed to be in an “expansion” this long after the Great Recession, but, as Douglas Porter notes, many people feel like we’re still recovering.

“I guess technically we are long into the ’expansion’ phase and really shouldn’t be calling it a ’recovery’ any more,” Mr. Porter said.

“However, I suspect most people still feel like we’re still recovering from the financial crisis and its aftermath.”

Income gains are weak, unemployment is sticking stubbornly close to 7 per cent, and 390,000 of our kids can’t find jobs.

Just last week, as The Globe and Mail’s David Parkinson writes, Statistics Canada reported that the economy contracted in the first quarter at an annual pace of 0.6 per cent for the worst showing since the great slump.

Of course, making a struggling economy worse was the oil shock, which has slammed Alberta and other oil-sensitive regions.

BMO has now cut its forecast for economic growth this year to just 1.5 per cent “as a result of the weak March GDP numbers and the Alberta fires and the coal production cuts by Teck,” Mr. Porter said.

He was referring to wildfires that shut down a chunk of oil patch production and the recent decision by Teck Resources Ltd. to stagger temporary shutdowns at six Canadian operations through the summer.

That 1.5 per cent, by the way, would be the slowest pace of growth, outside of a recession year, in at least 30 years.

“At the start of 2015, the overarching view on the Canadian growth outlook was that it faced one big negative (lower oil prices), and one big positive (stronger U.S. growth), which were supposed to roughly offset each other,” Mr. Porter said separately in a report.

“Fully 40 per cent into the year and we have certainly seen the negative at work (business investment plunged 15.5 per cent in Q1), while we are still waiting for the positive to kick in (export volumes have been down over the past two quarters).”

Canada, he added, “desperately needs” the U.S. economy to show some spark, and there is some hope there.

Mr. Porter’s not alone. Other economists also see this as a lagging recovery.

“While we continue to believe that a rebound will unfold in coming months, evens so far this year have clearly proved what we contended a year ago: This is the Unluckiest. Recovery. Ever,” he said.