Canada has officially entered a recession due to the economic devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the C.D. Howe Institute’s Business Cycle Council declared Friday.

The council, which acts as an arbiter of business cycle dates in Canada, said the economy peaked in February before the steps taken to slow the spread of the coronavirus brought the economy to a standstill.

“Members agreed that by applying the council’s methodology to the preliminary data available, Canada entered a recession in the first quarter of 2020,” the council said in statement.

There are no hard and fast rules for determining a recession, though a commonly used definition is two consecutive quarters of negative quarter-over-quarter economic growth.

However, the C.D. Howe council defines a recession as a pronounced, persistent, and pervasive decline…Click for full article.