Comprised of our country’s preeminent economists, the C.D. Howe Institute’s Business Cycle Council is an arbiter of business cycle dates in Canada.
The Council meets annually, or when economic conditions indicate the possibility of entry to, or exit from, a recession, and acts as a conduit for understanding how the economy evolves.The Council performs a similar function to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Business Cycle Dating Committee in the United States
In October 2012, the Council released its first report offering an assessment of the 2008/09 recession and a chronology of business cycle dates going back to 1926 (the methodology can be found here alongside its peer-reviewed Commentary).
In its second report, the Council determined that as of July 22, 2015, the data did not provide evidence that Canada had entered a recession. Similarly, the findings of its third and fourth reports corroborated its earlier conclusions. The latter report determined that, based on expanded expenditure-based GDP data, the 1980 recession was now a near miss, and the fourth quarter of 1974 should be added to the first quarter 1975 recession.
In its fifth report, the majority of members concluded that the first two quarters of 2015 did not qualify as a recession.
Meanwhile, in the Council’s sixth report, members updated their methodology to reflect the importance of the breadth of a downturn. The Council also changed the trough of the early 1990s recession from April to May
It was in its seventh report that members agreed that applying the Council’s methodology to the preliminary data available suggested that Canada entered a recession in the first quarter of 2020, with the economic peak occurring in February. Further, in its eighth report, the Council discussed whether April 2020 should be seen as the end of the recession based on signs of economic recovery seen since then, but agreed it was too early to call.
In the Council’s ninth report, members agreed the recession that began in March 2020 had its trough in April 2020, making it the shortest and deepest recession since the Great Depression in 1929. Finally, in the Council’s tenth report, members determined that Canada avoided a recession in 2022 and 2023, but that risks remained.
