"The truth is, I've never seen such uncertainty in terms of looking forward to the future," Harper told CTV. "I'm very worried about the Canadian economy."

Asked whether a depression was possible, he answered: "It could be, but I think we've learned enough about depression; we've learned enough from the 1930s to avoid some of the mistakes that caused a recession in 1929 to become a depression in the 1930s."

A depression is often described as a prolonged economic slump in which output drops more than 10 percent.

Unemployment in Canada hit 27 percent at the peak of the Great Depression in 1933 and between 1929 and 1933 Canada's gross national product fell 43 percent.

In the interview, Harper also said his finance minister's budget on January 27 would include billions of dollars in stimulus spending, ending more than a decade of back-to-back balanced budgets in Canada.

"Obviously, we're going to have to run a deficit," Harper said. "We're talking about spending billions of dollars that was not planned."

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