Oil Price Fall Turns Canadian Commodity Rich Provinces into Pessimistic

In a reversal of fortune, consumers in Canada’s prairie provinces Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba have become the country’s most pessimistic.

An index of consumer confidence calculated by Nanos Research for the prairies fell to 49.2 last week, putting it behind every other region for the first time since the series began in 2008.

The decline has coincided with an oil price shock that has reduced prices for crude by more than half since June and triggered a housing market correction in cities such as Calgary and Regina. Ontario consumers have replaced those on the prairies as Canada’s most optimistic, according to the indexes.

Every week, Nanos Research asks Canadians for their views on personal finances, job security, the outlook for the economy and where real estate prices are headed. This is what the survey data, which is compiled for Bloomberg News, captured for the week through Feb. 20:
*The Bloomberg Nanos Canadian Confidence Index — a national composite score based on the four survey questions — declined to 53.8, the lowest since May 2013.

via Bloomberg

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