Statistics Canada has ended the 7 a.m. release of employment and CPI data, moving everything to 8:30 a.m. I worked as a journalist in Ottawa covering economic data and those release times are brutal. The joy of not having to wake up a 5 a.m. in the middle of the Canadian winter really shines through in this story.
“I have struggled for years to understand why they continued to release at 7 o’clock – it just made no sense,” said David Watt, senior currency strategist at Royal Bank of Canada, the nation’s largest bank.
“The old story used to be that Statistics Canada wanted to release them early so that when people were driving into work, the news about the Canadian jobs and inflation numbers (would be on the car radio),” Watt said.
“But how many people actually listen to the radio coming into work these days?”
For traders, it means end of the 90 minute gap between Canadian and US jobs data. It was a pitfall of illiquidity and confusion anyway.
