Canada is on the brink of a full-blown recession

The Governor of the Bank of Canada (BOC), Stephen Poloz, was not kidding when he warned that the first quarter of 2015 would be “atrocious.”

After a respectable fourth quarter in 2014, the Canadian economy took a turn for the worse: domestic demand fell by 1.7%, owing to a huge drop in business investment, while the other components of GDP barely …