Canada’s Third Quarter: Worst in the G-7 Again?
Disappointingly, press coverage of Monday’s GDP numbers missed the fact that Canada had posted the worst second-quarter performance of any G-7 country. To his credit, Julian Beltrame of Canadian Press picked it up on Tuesday.
The media has redeemed itself by noting that today’s Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) projections suggest that Canada will post the worst third quarter in the G-7. (The Globe’s Kevin Carmichael appears to have been the first to make this point today.)
The previous OECD report (PDF) cited by my earlier post provided quarterly GDP changes from one quarter to the next. Today’s OECD report (PDF) provides annualized changes from one quarter to the next, making all of the numbers approximately four times larger.
The following table presents both quarter-over-quarter changes at annualized rates (declines in parentheses):
| Â |
Third Quarter  (Projected) |
Second Quarter  (Actual) |
|
 Germany  |
 4.2 %  |
 1.3 %   |
|
 France   |
 1.6 %  |
 1.4 %   |
|
 United States  |
 1.6 %  |
(1.0 %)Â Â Â |
|
 Japan  |
 1.1 %  |
 3.7 %   |
|
 Britain  |
(1.0 %)Â Â Â |
(2.6 %)Â Â Â |
|
 Italy   |
(1.1 %)Â Â Â |
(1.9 %)Â Â Â |
|
 Canada   |
(2.0 %)Â Â Â |
(3.4 %)Â Â |