Statistics Canada says manufacturing sales rose 1.9 per cent to $39.7-billion in June, partially reversing a 4.9-per-cent decline posted in May.

The agency attributes the increase to strong sales in the aerospace industry and a rise in the price of petroleum and coal products.

Constant dollar manufacturing sales rose 1.1 per cent in June, indicating that greater sales volumes were responsible for more than half of the increase in sales.

Sales rose in 12 of 21 manufacturing industries in June, representing 68 per cent of total sales.

Strength in the aerospace and petroleum industries was partly offset by lower auto sales.

Aerospace sales jumped 61.0 per cent to $1.6-billion, offsetting a 44.5-per-cent decline in May.

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When the world’s biggest import market crashed last year and economists advised Canadian exporters to chase growth in emerging markets, Winnipeg plastics manufacturer Craig McIntosh did just the opposite: He hired more salespeople and redoubled his efforts south of the border.

Half of Acrylon Plastics’ $40-million in sales come from exports to the world’s biggest economy. But even after watching the U.S. brought to its knees by the recession, Mr. McIntosh stuck with the tried-and-true Canadian export strategy.

The near-collapse of global trade has shone a harsh spotlight on Canadian exporters’ dangerous reliance on customers south of the border. With U.S. demand still in a serious slump, Canada is falling behind in the race to capture a greater share of the world’s markets likely to expand the most over the next decade.

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As always, those that make up our Top 50 this year are a diverse group, ranging from car rental companies like Enterprise to retailers like Wal-Mart, a multinational often portrayed as a foe of labour rather than a friend. In “What can we learn from Wal-Mart…” (next page), writer Steve Brearton explores why employees gave the nod to the store Sam Walton built, as well as to a couple of other firms that occupy less-than glamorous positions in the corporate pecking order—including our co-winner, Cintas. On the following pages, we chart the Top 50 and put a human face on all the numbers, with some key lessons delivered by employees themselves.

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Construction of new homes has surged by a surprising eight per cent in June, prompting analysts to say the housing market in Canada has turned the corner and begun recovering.

The annual pace of housing starts rose to 140,700 units in June from 130,300 in May, with the increase in activity spread across different types of buildings, said the national housing agency, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.

“The increase in housing starts in June is broadly based, encompassing both the singles and multiples segments,” said Bob Dugan, chief economist at CHMC. “In addition, Western Canada experienced an increase this month.”

The leap in activity was much stronger than anticipated. Analysts had been expecting a small increase, after seeing decreases in nine of the previous 12 months.

While home construction is still 30 per cent less active than a year ago, there are many signs that the bottom has been reached and the housing market has moved on to a slow recovery, said Dawn Desjardins, assistant chief economist at Royal Bank of Canada.

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Unlimited overtime pay was just one of the many perks John Halbauer enjoyed as a welder during Alberta’s super-sized energy boom.

That’s disappeared, along with 11 of the 25-year-old’s 13 co-workers who got laid-off in January. “I was worried. I didn’t know if I was going to have to move back home or what,” the Kimberley, B.C., native said.

His employer, Harley’s Welding Inc., is located in Nisku, an industrial park south of Edmonton that caters to the province’s notoriously unpredictable oil and gas industry. Most companies were hit hard when the global economic crisis and plummeting energy prices side-swiped Alberta late last year.

But in recent weeks, Mr. Halbauer and many others in the province have noticed that the economy is slowly improving, especially in the northern half of Alberta.

“We are almost really busy. Work is rolling in,” Mr. Halbauer said.

Indeed, a run-up in oil prices and recent news that two oil sands projects, including Imperial Oil Ltd.’s $8-billion Kearl mine outside Fort McMurray, are going ahead has buoyed many.

But the optimism is guarded, and no one is predicting another unprecedented boom for Alberta, once the country’s hottest economy.

Earlier this year, Statistics Canada estimated that oil-sands spending will drop to $13.2-billion in 2009, down more than 30 per cent from last year. Billions worth of capital projects have either been scrapped or put on hold.

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The new-condo market may be just starting to warm up again but the resale market is hot. Units in highly sought after areas are drawing multiple offers and selling quickly.

The new-condo market may be just starting to warm up again but the resale market is hot, according to May statistics from the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB). In fact, condo resales, at 2,081 units in May, were up about 2 per cent from the same month a year earlier.

Condo resales are again moving in lockstep with single family homes and townhouses.

In May, total Multiple Listings Service (MLS) condo sales were 4,561 units in the Greater Toronto Area, compared with 4,422 in May last year – a 2 per cent increase.

The average selling price for all MLS sales (including both houses and condos) was $399,811, down a touch from $400,817 last year.

While condo resales were up, listings were down, says Jason Mercer, senior manager of market analysis at TREB. The upshot is that more buyers than sellers means resale condos are moving with great speed – often as little as a week on the market – and the best ones are drawing multiple offers.“Sellers here in Mississauga are getting between 85 per cent and 105 per cent of the listing price,” says Debbie Cosic of Sutton Group Signature Realty Inc. of Mississauga. “In highly sought after areas like Lorne Park just north of Lakeshore Road and Mineola, near Highway 10 and the Queen Elizabeth, you will see three or four offers and suites moving within a week, often at more than the asking price.

“Calls to our office are up 60 per cent from March and showings of properties are up about 60 per cent as well.”

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The statistics gathering agency said Wednesday the pace of decline in its leading indicator index slowed sharply in May to just 0.1 per cent. That marked the smallest of nine consecutive declines, Statistics Canada said.

In fact, the month-over-month change – from a drop of 0.9 per cent in April to the May reading of 0.1 per cent – was the biggest in the index since December, 1965.

The sharpest turnarounds came in the housing and stock market components, continuing signs of improvements in the real estate market and financial stocks.

The housing component climbed from a drop in April to a 1-per-cent gain in May as the rebound in existing home sales gathered pace. The rise in the stock market component was largely driven by higher commodity prices and financial stocks, Statistics Canada said.

TD Securities economics strategist Ian Pollick noted that eight of 10 indicators improved.

“Even though there were very few outright positive advances during the month, the fact that the pace of decline slowed so drastically is definitely an encouraging sign,” Mr. Pollick said in a research note.

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Royal Bank of Canada has become the first of the country’s major banks to officially predict the recession will end in the third quarter as fiscal and monetary stimuli begin to heal the economy.

With housing resales up, manufacturing declines slowing and the third quarter just two weeks away, Canada can look forward to better times ahead, the bank said.

But despite the return to growth, Paul Ferley, the assistant chief economist at RBC Capital Markets, said it would take until next year for the recovery to gain full momentum and for consumers to cast aside their caution.

RBC said Monday the Canadian economy would emerge from three quarters of decline with a mild, but nevertheless positive, annualized growth rate of 0.8% in the third quarter followed by 2.4% in the fourth quarter. At the same time, it predicts the United States to end its four quarters of malaise with growth of 0.5% and 2.6%, respectively.

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