![\"Oil_36\"](\"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Oil_36.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n5. The Bank of Canada\u2019s interest rate cut in January. At the time, few if any economists expected it \u2014 though in hindsight it seems totally reasonable.<\/p>\n
4. Negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) wrapped up. Of course, it\u2019s not yet ratified, and there are serious doubts that it’ll pass US congress in 2016, but last year it was hard to imagine this group of 12 countries might agree to new global trade rules. It looked like there might be a deal in July, but when negotiators arrived in Hawaii several big sticking points remained \u2014 even before Canada and Mexico reportedly learned that the US and Japan had reach their own side-deal on content rules for autos. At that point, it didn\u2019t seem likely that a deal would get reached after a quick re-group in time for the fall. But alas, that\u2019s what happened, and after several days of imminent announcements, the deal was finally announced in October.<\/p>\n
3. The Canadian economy shrunk over in the first half of 2015. There\u2019s still disagreement over whether this episode justifies being called a (category 1?) recession. We are all anxiously awaiting the judgement of CD Howe Institute\u2019s business cycle council on this.<\/p>\n
Personally, I think it was a \u201crecession\u201d, but it wasn\u2019t something I had expected earlier in the year. In fact, in June, after the first quarter GDP data were released, I bet a ‘pessimistic’ Jim Stanford that we\u2019d get positive growth in the second quarter. As more data came in, it became clearer that we were indeed headed for what Jim called an “election recession”.<\/p>\n
\nI don’t follow #cdnecon<\/a> indicators that closely, but I’ll make @JimboStanford<\/a> a friendly wager (beer, of course): real GDP growth 2015Q2>0<\/p>\n