Canada’s economy is bracing for its steepest decline on record in the coming months, with unemployment set to rise to its highest in nearly a quarter of a century. Almost 1 million Canadians applied for jobless claims last week, representing almost 5% of the labor force, this does not include the thousands of claims filed over the weekend.

The speed of the jobless claims is record-breaking, the previous record for an entire month was 499,200 which happened in 1957, according to Statistics Canada data. We anticipate the unemployment in Canada will eventually spike higher than where it was in the early 1990s which, was 11.3%.

One of our greatest concerns with regards to the Canadian economy is its banking system even though its balance sheets are much stronger than 2008.

With this being a major business and consumer recession, timing could never be worse. There is extreme corporate and consumer leverage presently persisting throughout Canada, with debt levels in all tiers nearing all time highs….CLICK for complete article