Consumption and housing will be critical to the recovery because they normally represent roughly two-thirds of economic activity in Canada.
1 1 Statistics Canada defines consumption as spending on goods and services that are consumed by the household within the year they are purchased, while the definition of residential investment (housing)  I would like to thank Mikael Khan, Fotios Raptis, Patrick Sabourin and Brian Peterson for their help in preparing this speech and Rebecca Frost for superb research assistance.