Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, on Friday morning, we learned that Canada is the only G7 country in a recession. This is the topic the member for Edmonton West will address, as I will be sharing my time with him. As he will explain, we are the only G7 country in a recession. For the past five days, we have been waiting for a response from the Prime Minister, a man who has portrayed himself as a brilliant economist and crisis manager. For five days, we have been in crisis due to the revelation that our economy is the only one in decline, for two consecutive quarters. We are the only country in North America that is in a recession. What does the Prime Minister have to say about this? First, he said nothing. It took four days before he spoke to reporters. Last night, he approached a reporter. He thought she might ask him a nice question, perhaps give him a compliment. He was very happy. When she got to the microphone, the reporter asked him a question about the recession. Suddenly, he was unable to speak. He turned around and dodged the question. That is quite a response from a great economist. This morning, we asked him the question: Is Canada in a recession? He did not answer, other than to say that the economy is weak. Yes, it is weak. It is not the biggest and fastest-growing economy in the G7, as he had promised. It is a weak economy. Then he started making up excuses. Today, we are going to deal with the excuses that the Prime Minister is coming up with to justify having the only recession in the G7. Today, he says it is purely accidental and that if we take a closer look at the data, we will see that the investment component of GDP is up. Let us look at the report that Statistics Canada released on May 29, 2026. What does it say about investment? Allow me to quote a line from that report: Business capital investment fell 0.7% in the first quarter of 2026, the fifth consecutive quarterly decline. Investment has been down for five straight quarters. One of the causes of this recession is the dearth of investment. Based on the numbers since this Prime Minister took office, there has been a net decline of $20 billion in investment. In fact, we have the worst investment numbers in the G7, and we can see that the only economic aspects that went up last quarter are government spending and consumption, not investment. The Liberals’ second excuse is that this is just a technical recession. There is no such thing as a technical recession. Two consecutive quarters of negative growth is, by definition, a recession. The Liberals and their friends say we cannot just look at a single data point, so, okay, let us look at more data points. In the first three months of this year, 112,000 jobs were lost. The net number of jobs lost since the Prime Minister took office a year ago is 45,000. Canada’s unemployment rate is the second-highest in the G7. It is one-third higher than in the United States. The economy contracted in three of the last four quarters since the Prime Minister came to power. Our economy has bled more than $20 billion in net investment. A total of $109 billion drained out of the Canadian economy, and only $89 billion flowed in. Most of that foreign investment has been used by foreign corporations to take control of Canadian businesses. There has been no real, material investment. Canada has by far the highest level of household debt in the G7. This may be why Equifax reported that the number of insolvency cases had reached levels not seen since 2019, with a 19% increase over the previous year. In fact, 1.5 million Canadians missed a minimum payment on their debts. The mortgage delinquency rate rose by 32% compared to the previous year. When we look at the numbers in Canada, it is clear that we are in a recession because of the Liberal policies that have been imposed. No, they cannot use the usual excuse of tariffs or global factors. Every other country in the world is facing these challenges, but no other G7 country except Canada is in a recession. Mexico is part of North America and shares a border with the United States, but it is not in a recession. Canada is the only one in a recession. That is why we need to reverse the Liberal policies that caused the recession. The recession was caused by taxes, anti-development laws, government red tape and the doubling of the deficit. We, the Conservatives, are proposing to cut taxes on labour, energy, investment and housing construction. To reduce the cost and size of government, we are proposing to cut red tape, consultants, business support, foreign aid, handouts for bogus refugees and so on. The free enterprise system will enable us to grow our economy and cut costs. That is a real solution and that is what we are proposing today. I rise today to address the news from Friday that Canada is the only G7 country in a recession. Five days have gone by, and the Prime Minister has not bothered to answer a single question in the House of Commons addressing this terrible news. He said he was a man with a plan, a guy who could handle a crisis, and yet for four days, he would not even take media questions on the fact that Canada was the only G7 country in a recession. Yesterday, while walking out from a speech, a journalist called him over. He had a big smile on his face, expecting that the media was going to again throw rose petals at him. When he arrived and found that the question was about the recession, he said oh, ah, and he turned around and walked away, that being his first response after four days of learning that Canada is in a recession, the only country in the G7 in a recession. Today, he finally took a few questions from the media but refused to answer whether we were in a recession. He did make a number of excuses. He claimed that it was just that some aspects of GDP shrunk. In reality, he said, investment, is up. What does Statistics Canada say about that? The report that broke the news of the recession said, “Business capital investment fell 0.7% in the first quarter of 2026, the fifth consecutive quarterly decline.” It is not true, Mr. Prime Minister, that investment is up. In fact, the only things that were up were government spending and consumption, meaning that Canadians had to spend more just to survive. The things one would want to be up, like the net exports, were down. We have a trade deficit. Investment was also down. He went on to claim that, in fact, it was just a technical recession. In what sense is it technical? The textbook definition of a recession is two back-to-back quarters of negative growth. That definition is met. Liberals then say, as the Prime Minister said today, that we cannot focus just on one thing. I agree. Let us focus on the other data points. In the first three months of the year, 112,000 jobs were lost. Since the Prime Minister took office, on a net basis, there are 45,000 more Canadians unemployed. We have the second-highest unemployment in the G7, a third higher than in the United States. Of the last four quarters under the Prime Minister, the economy has shrunk in three of them. Business investment is down 0.7%. Over $20 billion of net investment has fled since he took office. Equifax reported that insolvency rates have increased to levels not seen since 2009, up 19% year over year, and 1.5 million Canadians have missed a debt payment in the first three months of this year alone, with mortgage delinquency rates up 32% year over year. Canada has the biggest household debt load of any country in the G7. The CEO of the Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto said that one-tenth of Toronto is now eating at a food bank. That is the real cost. This is not technical. Hunger in the bellies of Canadians who cannot pay their bills is not technical. Canadians need a reversal in the Liberal policies, and that is what we are fighting for today. Let us have a strong, affordable and safe Canada.
