It is official. Canada is now in recession. And job losses are on the way. Don’t be fooled by rosy predictions of a quick turnaround.

The country’s number-one bank, the Royal Bank of Canada (rbc), just announced that the United States has dragged Canada’s economy into recession. The report said the Canadian economy is heading down a “rocky road” as the global economy falters and prices for key Canadian commodities slide. Canada will post no growth in 2009 and the jobless rate will climb as high as 7.4 percent.

However, the rbc’s chief economist, Craig Wright, said that he expected “the slowdown in Canada not to be as severe as in other countries since the imbalances plaguing other countries are more pronounced.”

Mr. Wright might be suffering from the same sort of wishful thinking that affected former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, current Chairman Ben Bernanke, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors David Lereah, and multiple ceos in famed and now-defunct Wall Street banks.

The imbalances plaguing Canada are very real, and the slowdown will be severe.

One such “imbalance” plaguing Canada is the fact that 85 percent of Canadian trade is with the U.S. That’s not necessarily a bad thing except for the fact that America is now in the early stages of the worst downturn since the Great Depression. Some economists are already referring to it as Great Depression ii. Who will purchase Canadian goods then?

Reports out of California already confirm that the massive shipping ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are eerily quiet. Shipping cranes stand still, truck traffic trickles, and cargo vessels sit moored to piers.

Then there is the fact that Ontario—the industrial heartland of Canada—will be a net recipient of provincial welfare (“equalization”) payments for the first time in the history of the nation. Ontario will join Quebec in receiving money from Canada’s more prosperous provinces—meaning that Canada’s two largest provinces will be on the dole. Additionally, the federal government has decided to dole out multiple billions more to automakers.

But if analysts think that the oil-rich western provinces will be able to continue to foot the bill, maybe they haven’t noticed the fact that oil prices have crashed from $140 per barrel to less than $40 per barrel over the past few months. Already several giant oil-sands projects in Alberta have been mothballed. Oil companies are hunkering down; layoffs and reduced tax revenue are inevitable.

And what about Canada’s agricultural breadbasket? Grains are no longer fetching the record prices they once were. Corn, wheat and soybean prices are each down more than 46 percent from their highs this year. Although several top analysts predict that food prices may not be down for long, the current low prices will not help Canada’s financial position as a major grain exporter.

Lumber prices are down significantly as well.

The same applies to the metals and mining industry. Prices for nickel, zinc, lead and copper have plummeted. Mines are closing up across the country, and more closures are on the way. As with the oil industry, job losses will mount, tax bases will constrict and export revenues will shrink.

And the housing market—especially in the bubble-plagued west—may be on the cusp of popping. Already, builders report a slowdown in Alberta. How so many people can apparently afford half-million-dollar homes is astounding. For a glimpse of where house prices are going, Canadians should look at past housing market busts, which followed collapsing commodity prices. Or, people in Calgary, Edmonton, Regina and Saskatoon could just look at conditions in California, Florida and Nevada today.

Tough times have arrived in Canada. The Canadian economy is intricately linked to the U.S., and thus will not escape the coming downturn. As we warned in August, a flood of job losses is on its way.

But there is a more fundamental reason the economies of the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa are all experiencing economic turmoil at the same time. You can read about that core reason in the book The United States and Britain in Prophecy.