Less than a month after publishing its 'quarterly' forecasts for gross domestic product in Canada, the federal finance department has new numbers out. The big change: While Finance was predicting the Canadian economy would grow by 0.3 per cent in 2009, it is now predicting that whatever we've got now, it'll e 0.4 per cent smaller at the end of 2009. What does that mean? Well, one per cent of GDP represents about $16 billion in economic activity.Here's some details I received from the Department of Finance this morning — breaking down their estimates by quarter (chart on the left). In the Economic and Fiscal Statement, the forecast was for growth to resume in the quarter beginning in April. That would mean that governments just had to get over a three-month hump before things would pick up again.Now Finance says growth will not resume until the quarter beginning in July, a much longer period for governments to now plan for.We will not, incidentally, get the numbers on GDP for the quarter that ends this month until March 2, 2009.Here's the new quarter by quarter GDP forecast:
| Real GDP Forecast | |
| 08Q4 | -1.9 |
| 09Q1 | -1.7 |
| 09Q2 | -0.5 |
| 09Q3 | 1.7 |
| 09Q4 | 2.2 |