The impact has been important. The global recession has been fairly large. It affected the U.S. significantly. This is our main trading partner. The first channel of impact was through exports. Our exports went down significantly. It also affected confidence in Canada. In October of 2008 we saw a huge and sudden drop in confidence. Domestic demand, consumption, and investment followed along quickly, and we ended up with a large reduction in GDP, similar to the reduction we observed in the early nineties in Canada.
On March 8th, 2011. See this statement in context.