Canada's trade deficit widens in Feb.

Canada's trade deficit tripled to 1.9 billion Canadian dollars (1.5 billion U.S dollars) in February due to a sharp decrease of exports, according to the official Statistics Canada Tuesday.

January saw a deficit of 628 million Canadian dollars (476 million U.S. dollars). In both price and volume terms, February's exports fell 5.4 percent from a record high in January, pushing the total value of exports down to 43.7 billion Canadian dollars (33.3 billion U.S. dollars).

The monthly deterioration in trade deficit was due to the payback on strong numbers the month before and left a strong quarter intact so far, Scotiabank said.

Meanwhile, the country's imports fell 2.6 percent to 45.6 billion Canadian dollars (34.7 billion U.S. dollars). The fall was caused by the energy sector whose imports dropped 30 percent to the lowest level since September 2003. Endi