I was at a CMHC Housing market outlook all day yesterday and although I will post a synopsis of the highlights later this week, I can say this.  Many of the economists suggested that many of the headlines and much of the media has overblown our current state.  I have been saying this a lot lately. No mistake things are certainly slower and will continue to be slow through 2009 but the sky is not falling, especially in Alberta.Here is an article  that supports what we have been saying all week.  There will not be a technical recession in Canada and even if there is a real slowdown that feels like a recession we are well on our way of attacking it.  Yes, our neighbour to the south is headed for a real recession, people have to stop saying that by default we will too.  Certainly they do affect us, BUT not as much as they used to.  We have many other customers globally now for our commodities.  Look forward to my highlight package on the Canadian economy and the housing market outlook 

Benjamin Tal of CIBC World Markets wrote in their current weekly insight wmi-1107.pdf that you have to be careful when reading headlines.  His specific example this time around was regarding house prices and the dropping Canada wide;

House prices in Canada are falling. But looking simply at the headline numbers can be very misleading. At a 

risk of being a bit technical, we will note that the headline numbers reflect a current weighting for each city, 

which leads to a significant bias to the overall average price since dramatic changes in the volume of the sales 

in certain cities can notably influence the national average price. Take Vancouver. The close to 45% year-over- 

year fall in the number of homes sold in the city and the fact that Vancouver prices are much higher than the 

national average combined to make it look as though national home prices were falling sharply when, in fact, 

it was driven by fewer expensive homes being sold in Vancouver, as a fraction of the whole. The result: the 

national headline number is down by close to 6% (y/y) last month but if properly weighted, house prices fell by 

only 1%. Yes, prices are falling and they will continue to fall, but the headline numbers exaggerate the real 

weakness in the housing market.