The Canadian economy has outperformed expectations so far this year, avoiding the slowdown many forecasters were anticipating in response to the Bank of Canada's aggressive rate hikes. The resilience of the Canadian economy prompted the central bank to raise interest rates again last week, saying that the risk of sticky inflation has risen.
"Now, it's more like 25,000. That's almost what we need in a month just to keep the unemployment rate from rising," Porter said. During the first quarter of the year, real gross domestic product — which measures the size of the economy — grew at an annualized rate of 3.1 per cent.While population growth doesn't account for all of the boost in economic activity, Porter said the rate of population growth should be somewhat taken into account when looking at growth figures.
But Royce Mendes, managing director and head of macro strategy at Desjardins, argues that population growth is interfering with the Bank of Canada's efforts by propping up demand in the housing market.