Juno News - Canada’s recession reality

00:00:00.000 he has said little about the latest dismal economic news and his critics say he's in hiding

00:00:11.360 last week statistics canada reported the country slipped into recession as two straight quarters

00:00:17.920 of shrinking gdp that came just two days after prime minister carney said this

00:00:23.920 Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, this government is moving forward this economy in the face

00:00:32.860 of a global energy crisis, in the face of a tariff crisis, in the face of wars. This

00:00:39.840 country is the second strongest economy in the G7. We are growing strong. We have the

00:00:45.900 strongest fiscal position in the G7. We have a plan. Canada has a bright future.

00:00:52.300 Well, Conservative Party leader Pierre Palliev says all the other G7 countries face the same economic challenges as Canada, but only our economy is shrinking.

00:01:05.200 France is facing tariffs and global economic uncertainty.

00:01:11.500 France is not in a recession.

00:01:14.140 The United Kingdom is facing tariffs and the global energy price increase.

00:01:19.120 And the United Kingdom is not in recession.

00:01:23.020 Germany and Italy are facing global economic effects and tariffs.

00:01:28.280 They're not in recession.

00:01:29.700 Japan is facing tariffs and the global economic economy.

00:01:34.040 Japan is not in recession.

00:01:35.420 The United States is obviously facing tariffs and global economic factors like high energy prices.

00:01:42.460 And the United States is not in recession.

00:01:44.660 So why is it that only Canada, after a year of Mark Carney, is in a recession today?

00:01:53.720 Well, you could ask him that question, but he won't take any of your questions.

00:01:58.540 He's hiding from you.

00:02:00.460 It was Friday morning that we learned that Canada's economy was the only one in a recession,

00:02:07.680 the only G7 economy.

00:02:09.240 And what has Mark Carney done since?

00:02:11.580 He's been in hiding.

00:02:12.440 Oh, yes, he let you in for 30 seconds to have a little picture of him with the Chinese foreign minister.

00:02:17.260 Then he hid for the rest of the weekend.

00:02:19.580 Today, he's going to let you show up and take a picture of him wearing a hard hat and carrying a hammer around, pretending he's a carpenter.

00:02:27.420 But he won't have time to take questions on how he created the only recession in the G7.

00:02:33.720 question period where normally prime ministers go to answer especially in a moment of crisis

00:02:39.180 when the economy has fallen into the only recession in the G7 you would expect him to

00:02:44.140 be there to be accountable to show his incredible economic brilliance but he's not showing up for

00:02:48.780 question period either while Canadians are starving losing their jobs and missing mortgage

00:02:54.120 payments and Mark Carney has created the only G7 economy in a recession he is hiding from

00:02:59.900 accountability. Well, much of the media reaction has been aimed at downplaying what it calls

00:03:05.040 merely a technical recession. This headline from the Financial Post, for example,

00:03:11.080 recession, what recession? Canada's economy is doing better than it has in years. By this measure,

00:03:17.080 GDP per person is once again on the rise. CBC News featured one analyst who said the downturn

00:03:24.840 may be over already. This is small, according to Stats Canada, but it is present and it's not

00:03:32.620 anything that economists wanted to see. Two consecutive quarters is what we call a technical

00:03:37.840 recession. When the economy shrinks, when there's a contraction in economic growth for six months

00:03:44.100 consecutively, really. But when we say it's a technical recession, it's because there's also

00:03:48.700 different ways to measure this. Do we compare it year over year? Do we compare it quarter over

00:03:53.860 quarter? Do we compare it month to month? And needless to say, while we aren't seeing a lot

00:03:58.460 of green arrows in these numbers, by some definitions, this is a technical recession.

00:04:03.300 By some definitions, it's not. But there is not a lot of growth happening here. We are seeing

00:04:08.780 some shrinking in the GDP, the gross domestic product. That's one of the ways that we measure

00:04:14.600 how big the economy is, to put it simply there. And it declined at an annualized rate, year over

00:04:20.480 year by 0.1% in the first quarter. We are seeing economists already react to these numbers, though,

00:04:26.440 by pointing out that while the economy is sluggish, you know, there's kind of a bleh vibe to everything

00:04:31.720 because of tariffs and energy prices dragging things down. This technical recession, if it

00:04:37.520 happened, may be over by some measures or may just not be as big a deal as it sounds because

00:04:42.600 oil and gas prices have gone up so much. And that does inject money into the Canadian economy.

00:04:48.280 Despite that, Conservatives say the economic pain felt by Canadians is all too real.

00:04:54.040 Mr. Carney says we're not in a real recession.

00:04:56.820 He sent out his liberal commentators and economists to say it's just a technicality.

00:05:01.600 Mr. Carney, I have a question for you.

00:05:02.920 And I hope that you'll have the courage to actually look Canadians in the eyes today and be accountable for your recession.

00:05:10.300 The single mother who has to turn back items at the grocery checkout because she can't afford to pay for them.

00:05:16.600 Are you going to tell her that her hunger is just a technicality?

00:05:20.920 Are you going to say to the man who goes home to his kids in Windsor tonight to say that he's lost his job and they're going to have to sell the home, that's only technical?

00:05:28.660 Are you going to tell that young couple that work every day but still can't move out of that 400-square-foot apartment that their inability to own a home is just technical?

00:05:38.540 or are you going to own up for the recession that you created

00:05:42.740 and get into the House of Commons and do your job to reverse the liberal policies

00:05:47.480 that have made us the only economy with a recession in the G7?

00:05:51.660 We as Conservatives are here to work.

00:05:54.140 We have a plan to reverse the liberal recession,

00:05:57.080 get rid of the anti-development laws,

00:05:59.220 cut the red tape to unlock our businesses so that they can grow higher and pay more wages,

00:06:03.820 cut the bureaucracy, the consultants, the foreign aid,

00:06:06.680 the handouts to phony refugees, the corporate welfare to liberal insiders.

00:06:11.300 Close the tax loopholes that Mark Carney uses to avoid paying his taxes

00:06:15.760 so that we can reduce them for everyone.

00:06:17.900 Use that money to bring down inflationary deficits, taxes.

00:06:21.280 Let's cut taxes on work, investment, savings, home building, and energy

00:06:26.220 so that we can unlock our economy and be the fastest growing in the G7.

00:06:31.700 Polyev has called for an emergency debate on the economy as soon as possible.

00:06:35.900 Our guest today is Dan McTague, former Member of Parliament.

00:06:40.380 He spent 18 years as a Liberal MP, and he's also President for Canadians for Affordable Energy.

00:06:46.680 Welcome, Dan.

00:06:47.640 Mark, good to be here on a Monday and looking forward to our discussion.

00:06:51.980 Well, the Prime Minister has been quiet since the news came out that Canada has slipped into recession.

00:06:57.980 He does have some of his friends in the media, again, running interference for the liberals, saying that it's just a technical recession.

00:07:07.780 It doesn't mean a whole lot. Our economy is still growing, despite word out of Statistics Canada.

00:07:14.420 In fact, it's not growing. It hasn't been growing for the last couple of quarters.

00:07:18.360 And so hence the fact that we're in a recession and the Conservatives are saying, well, it's this recession is all too real for Canadians who are feeling the pinch.

00:07:28.300 Where do you stand on it?

00:07:30.300 Yeah, I think there's the real world and there's the Ottawa bubble.

00:07:33.340 The Ottawa bubble says everything's just fine.

00:07:35.300 We're civil servants.

00:07:36.220 We have pensions.

00:07:37.140 We get paid 30,000 bucks as journalists.

00:07:39.820 So we don't really care.

00:07:41.180 We don't feel it.

00:07:41.880 We don't see it.

00:07:42.780 We don't hear it.

00:07:43.600 We don't repeat it.

00:07:44.940 But that's not what's happening on the street.

00:07:46.640 and everyone knows we're in a big pickle and uh you know whether you want to call it technical or

00:07:52.560 not a recession is a recession i heard this kind of nonsense back in the 80s and 90s again in 2000s

00:07:57.680 when we completely denied the fact that we were there the reality is that in 2009 last time we

00:08:03.360 crossed into this area we were dealing with a global economic meltdown which canada was unscathed

00:08:08.880 a very strong fiscal position which it doesn't have now it had strong institutions which we

00:08:14.400 don't have now uh it had a lot of investment despite the downturn which we don't have now

00:08:20.160 and so you know we also didn't have you know learning the country with 1.5 million people

00:08:25.920 more than what our own department of immigration would have accepted and so we've created inflation

00:08:30.800 we've depressed uh labor uh we've created an unemployment vortex especially for young people

00:08:37.680 and we've basically shown the door to anybody unless of course we may propose that they get

00:08:42.000 500 000 fines while at the same time energy prices are going through the roof food prices are going

00:08:47.760 through the roof uh cost of mortgaging is going through the roof no one can afford what canada

00:08:53.440 has become and whether it's we want to point one finger you need several to figure out just how

00:08:58.000 bad it's been but we have pursued a woke policy of the past decade that is now literally uh these

00:09:06.400 chickens coming home to roost and the reality is that even those who about a year ago were

00:09:12.000 strutting their stuff you know elbows in the air elbows up well how does it feel because right now

00:09:18.240 it's ankles up and there's no denying it yeah it's interesting that you mentioned inflation because

00:09:24.080 sometimes bringing in a whole bunch of people like five million people you brought in during

00:09:28.960 trudeau's time and they continue to come in i mean they pump the brakes a little bit but we're still

00:09:34.160 taking in a lot of people sometimes that can mask the recession because you know people are coming

00:09:41.280 in you're giving them money to spend and so just by virtue of the fact that they are spending that

00:09:46.960 money sometimes can make the economy look better than it is but you wouldn't know it by listening

00:09:51.440 to the media which seems to be taking trouble on the global mail travel balloons by the globe and

00:10:00.320 mail today that maybe we should be cutting back on seniors benefits wonderful stuff uh you know

00:10:06.080 when you destroy and vandalize an economy and you put up your left wing arms and you say this is the

00:10:10.560 right thing to do because we all have government jobs and we all have pensions and whatnot that's

00:10:15.040 great except that when you drive out the creative class that people actually produce create innovate

00:10:21.440 risk use their sweat equity to create something in this country you told them basically shove off

00:10:26.720 get lost there's no business case and admonish them with dei esg and also net zero and all sorts

00:10:32.240 of other nonsensical ideas around pervading infecting the country for the past 10 years

00:10:37.680 this very much in my view sadly is uh is is a uh you know an implosion that is being detonated from

00:10:45.760 within and we have decided that we want to go down this route to satisfy a particularly woke

00:10:51.760 constituency in this country that has now destroyed the canadian economy there are many

00:10:55.760 other nations going into a recession yeah they're having difficulty but they're avoiding it canada

00:10:59.920 isn't because we've determined that we're going to go on this pass on this path we've decided to do

00:11:05.840 so regardless of the evidence regardless of what is out there and having uh you know journalists

00:11:11.200 who have a responsibility to hold governments to account paid by the government to keep their

00:11:15.920 mouths shut or to not look at certain things as you know it's one of the critical most critical

00:11:20.480 points and i you know i do my cash price predictions you know there's half the media

00:11:24.320 out there won't talk they want to talk about my gas price predictions but they don't want to credit

00:11:28.800 canadians for affordable energy because they don't like the net zero policy that we're going after

00:11:32.160 that is undermining the canadian economy you can't have it both ways by the way to those companies

00:11:37.040 that do that don't use my stuff or i will sue you and i want to make that very very clear i've done

00:11:41.760 this before i've been very successful but if you want to be mr woke and mr cool and have everybody

00:11:46.560 drive around evs you shouldn't care about the price of gas natural gas the cost of food because

00:11:50.400 you think we should be eating bugs to begin with driving around a little evs made in china uh well

00:11:55.200 at the same time heat pumps that don't work in the middle of winter it could wind up freezing

00:11:59.200 people to death we're not for insurance companies saying you have to have dual fuel i can go on

00:12:03.520 but we have painted ourselves into a corner this is a detrimental self-made destruction that the

00:12:11.440 country has decided to embrace if you're not clue enough cluing in well enough look at the number

00:12:16.640 of people want to leave because the investment is already left and it's not coming back what

00:12:20.080 What's my proof? 138.4 Canadian pennies to buy a U.S. dollar.

00:12:24.140 No one wants to invest in Canada.

00:12:26.660 Yeah, we could talk about your latest predictions on gas prices.

00:12:30.960 I mean, we've seen fluctuations, obviously, due to the ebbs and flows

00:12:34.660 and negotiations with Iran and also what's going on with Israel and Hezbollah.

00:12:40.960 But I do want to ask you this first.

00:12:42.140 Just two days before the news came out about the fact that Canada was in recession,

00:12:47.180 the prime minister came out and said canada's economy was the second fastest growing in the g7

00:12:52.780 how do you account for the disconnect here between what he is telling and given all of this

00:12:58.220 kind of explains why he's been awfully quiet since then i mean the conservatives are saying he's in

00:13:03.500 hiding i mean he's still out there somewhere obviously but the fact that he's not talking

00:13:08.300 here suggests that this is probably a bit of an embarrassment for him we're certainly not the

00:13:14.140 second fastest growing country in the g7 in fact we're the slowest growing country in the g7 and

00:13:20.220 he just completely got it wrong and this was just two days before the news came out uh how do you

00:13:25.660 account for that well maybe that uh fine wine and booze and catering on the airplanes that's

00:13:31.660 gone to their head they're still not able to uh you know to get off their uh their their drunken

00:13:36.460 stupor the reality is that the country is not doing well talk to anybody unless you happen to

00:13:41.180 to be some wokester out in the middle of nowhere living on you know a particular island and uh

00:13:46.140 you know eating hemp or rather using hemp to get around and a couple pieces of grain and stuff like

00:13:50.860 that the rest of the world is this country is very worried very nervous and many people are failing

00:13:57.180 and it's getting worse and i don't know if there's a controlled demolition of the economy i hope

00:14:01.900 that's not the case but to simply go out and deny what is obvious and use all sorts of little tricks

00:14:07.980 with stats can play little games about what is and what isn't isn't masking the reality this country

00:14:15.500 decided to do this on its own and don't blame donald trump maybe we'll hear him blame justin

00:14:20.220 trudeau i don't think so but it might be convenient for us to point fingers elsewhere when we have

00:14:25.660 no other way in which to explain this except to put blame on our own woke stupidity over the

00:14:32.860 the past decade we warned people about this we knew this was going to happen when you destroy

00:14:37.860 manufacturing you destroy the investment climate you destroy our natural resource sector when you

00:14:43.360 make it impossible for people to make ends meet and then you flood the country with people who

00:14:47.880 are prepared to work for virtually nothing you have 25 people living in a basement apart yes you

00:14:52.100 might have fixed some of these things but the damage the knock-on effect is long lasting and

00:14:57.720 I suspect that the next quarter is going to be just as bad unless they can play and engage in

00:15:02.000 some kind of creative numbers to try to mask and paper over the fact the country's in decline

00:15:06.380 I don't care what officialdom in Ottawa likes to say the reality on the street and everyone feels

00:15:12.000 it everyone knows it because this country's in a lot of trouble and don't take my word for it

00:15:16.200 check your portfolio check your assets as far as real estate is concerned the very thing that

00:15:20.900 people invested in over the past several years their nest egg is now completely gone and by the

00:15:26.020 way when you go to the grocery checkout are you not having a little bit of you know sinking

00:15:31.540 feeling every time you get there i know i am and so i can't believe the last time i was at food

00:15:37.440 basics out here i saw two people leave half what they were going to buy on the table at the cash

00:15:42.960 register because they simply can't afford that's not my canada and people who destroyed it for

00:15:47.840 their woke selfish ideological narrative left-wing socialist nonsense uh whether that's in my party

00:15:54.760 which it is now it's not it was a social party not a socialist party very much interested in

00:15:58.440 improving social condition they have a lot to blame for what they have done and uh yeah there's

00:16:04.340 still going to be again those out there who are doing very well have got their money uh you know

00:16:09.060 have nice big fat pensions work for the government that work at civil servants frankly you've had

00:16:14.700 your opinion and you've destroyed the rest of the country for the rest of us for generations to come

00:16:18.960 so uh you know you've disenfranchised yourself by destroying the canadian economy well done

00:16:23.800 Yeah, I mean, you've got, what, 2.2 million people going to food banks. And the reality of stories that you just said, which is a person in front of you who could not afford to pay for all the groceries that they put on the conveyor belt.

00:16:39.300 These are the realities, and they're in stark contrast to what we're being told by the government, which is everything's fine, we're doing great.

00:16:47.200 It's just amazing the gap between reality and propaganda when we're hearing from this government.

00:16:56.820 And it would be hard, of course, for Carney to blame Trudeau for anything when Carney, in fact, was an advisor to Trudeau for five years.

00:17:04.900 And now we see, you probably are aware, of course, you saw him in New York, sort of, to me, it looked like an olive branch saying, you know, let's start over, let's, you know, we need a new deal with America.

00:17:19.060 We've got Doug Ford now planning an event in D.C., you know, with Ross Perot Jr.

00:17:27.400 And, you know, despite all of that, they're also saying, well, we've got to disconnect from,

00:17:31.880 we've got to decouple from the United States and hook up with China and Europe.

00:17:36.720 I mean, it just seems like they're at a point where they're just throwing anything at the wall and hoping that something sticks.

00:17:44.820 Look, the game was over a year and a half ago, you know,

00:17:47.420 When Justin was down to 6%, the Liberals were out.

00:17:50.820 They found a new person.

00:17:52.100 They made people all feel that, oh, this is bad Donald Trump.

00:17:54.840 And we could have a guy with great resume who's pretty much had the, you know,

00:17:59.640 the what we call the Midas touch and reverse.

00:18:03.400 Every time he's come out, everyone thinks he's the boy wonder.

00:18:07.200 Everything turns to garbage.

00:18:09.080 And, you know, Mark, I was just blown away when I saw the numbers about Canada's exports.

00:18:14.820 uh you know 70 72 76 percent to the united states they uh they import we import less than that so

00:18:24.020 we always have a net with them of europe yeah six seven percent big deal but we uh they uh we take

00:18:30.560 in 13 of our of our imports from them so any attempt to try to say china or europe is our

00:18:36.640 outcome is just a fool's errand and and it blinded people yeah it's glitter it's great it's wonderful

00:18:42.800 oh yeah we're all European and yeah you know where these are all values baloney wake the hell up and

00:18:49.400 by the way don't wake up you've done your damage you've had four elections in which you have really

00:18:54.340 worked hard to bring about your net your your your narratives which have netted absolutely zero for

00:19:02.060 the country you've had your time pack up get the hell out mark carney he can't continue as prime

00:19:08.180 minister if he's going to bring the country to a position where it won't it won't exist

00:19:12.560 economically and may very well see social and economic and political tensions that are going

00:19:18.120 to make it quite unbearable to do anything in this country and I don't care how we want to slice this

00:19:22.500 we made a big mistake I don't like Donald Trump more than anyone else but we miscalculate our

00:19:27.560 reaction a country as nimble in our finances and nimble in our foreign affairs could very well have

00:19:33.280 outflanked uh donald trump seen him to some of these things mexico is doing it why the hell are

00:19:39.200 we not able to do that we've got our heads buried in the sand and uh you know the reality is that

00:19:44.480 there are some grievances that need to be looked at if we don't our automotive sector is gone our

00:19:48.800 energy sector is in is is in is in is in a holding pattern um and our ag culture is uh is basically

00:19:56.640 dependent on whatever china says they want to but you know really betray us with or basically

00:20:02.160 try to blackmail us with which is what they've done that's no way of running it by the way

00:20:06.960 this whole thing with the f35s and the grippens and the sob great you want to get an inferior

00:20:12.640 product just to make a political statement good luck with that and the response i think will be

00:20:16.640 far worse than anybody has calculated so this is one way of increasing of ensuring the third quarter

00:20:22.720 uh and with the next quarter on which we look at this uh the economic outlook will be like

00:20:27.680 subsequent ones to come all in the negative and this country will be very much committed to years

00:20:33.440 of a recessionary uh of a recessionary experiment yeah i mean the fact that we've made a secret

00:20:40.560 security agreement with the chinese uh is very disturbing certainly that will not go unnoticed

00:20:48.960 south of the border where our relations with the united states have already been strained and given

00:20:54.400 the sour state of those relations i mean how do we get things back on the rails with the americans

00:21:01.440 in order to save kuzma yeah what would you do in a state like this given kind of the

00:21:08.320 you know lousy state of our of our relationship with the americans well but the time to eat

00:21:14.080 humble pie this isn't about winning uh the americans and beating them militarily or beating

00:21:18.480 them economically we can't and shouldn't do that we have many values but we have to atone for the

00:21:23.920 fact that we were so arrogant so tony and trendy that we could go you know flank him and you know

00:21:29.600 elbows up but we now find his ankles up and the things for which we are weak were not done by

00:21:35.440 donald trump they were not done by the u.s administration they merely called us on it and

00:21:40.240 exposed why we made some really stunned mistakes over the past 10 years look if we could just get

00:21:45.840 people who have best interests free this free that government money government handouts government

00:21:50.480 pensions we get them aside and start dealing and talking to canadians who really say what we need

00:21:55.600 to do is be as practical as we can and work with what we have and not look a gift horse in the

00:22:00.000 mouth you don't have to like donald trump but you have to deal with the american public and you have

00:22:05.520 to be able to come back and say these are the countermeasures that we offer and negotiate

00:22:10.800 let's offer a deal rather than uh these kind of platitudes and you know these rather childish

00:22:16.480 remarks that uh oh well you know he's not fit he doesn't do this look we poked the bear in the eye

00:22:22.080 enough even before he was re-elected we went out and uh justin true's first comment so he defeated

00:22:28.000 a woman he did listen the world is past that it's not 2015 anymore start dealing with the facts at

00:22:33.440 hand our economy is in decline their economy is surging our economy is losing you know valuable

00:22:42.080 entrepreneurs we're seeing brain drain in this country they're going to the united states we're

00:22:46.800 going to an environment they are going to a jurisdiction who doesn't tax the living snot

00:22:50.880 out of them every time they turn around and then pretend that those programs are somehow helping us

00:22:55.280 have a better health care system with better social outcomes which they are not so we need

00:23:00.720 to really up our game and recognize that you know atoning for the past 10 years means getting rid

00:23:06.160 as we should have last year the liberals and putting them in the penalty box so they can get

00:23:10.320 readjusted and maybe a bit of a tune-up so they get re-connected with reality as opposed to the

00:23:16.000 reality we currently have we're all going to suffer because of our arrogance and because

00:23:21.360 our willingness to uh to go along with this idea that uh you know trump is to blame and uh we can

00:23:26.640 simply magically wish these things away by spending more money offering more social programs and

00:23:32.320 cozying up with uh countries that still represent in mark carney's words the greatest security

00:23:38.560 threat the world knows and that's china so if you want to do that that's great you want to pretend

00:23:42.800 the europeans have got our back frankly they haven't had our back in centuries we came out

00:23:46.480 and built them not once but twice i know i've got relatives who gave their lives in that part of the

00:23:51.040 world so i don't need to hear a lecture about you know dealing with europe doesn't care about canada

00:23:56.240 every time we sell something to them we buy two items back it's it's a it's a raw deal and there's

00:24:01.360 no way of getting around that there's no way you're going to replicate 80 of your economy

00:24:06.160 and change it overnight just because you got your elbows up remember and i will say it because it's

00:24:11.040 very important we no longer have our elbows up we have our ankles up and frankly the time to play

00:24:17.600 this kind of game is over it's time to recognize our mess that we created and get on with making

00:24:23.520 a better deal not just with the americans but a better deal recognizing reconnoitering where

00:24:28.960 canada is in the world and one of them is not cozying up to china it's standing up to china

00:24:34.000 and it's many friends.

00:24:37.400 Dan McTighe, thank you so much for coming on the show.

00:24:39.420 We appreciate it as always.

00:24:41.200 Good to be here.

00:24:41.820 Thanks for having me, Mark.

00:24:42.660 If you enjoyed this show,

00:24:43.600 consider supporting great independent journalism

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00:24:48.280 Please go to junonews.com backslash straight up.

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Juno News - June 02, 2026

Canada’s recession reality

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