PJ The Belt - May 08, 2026


Carney Just ACCELERATED THE BREAKUP of Canada — It’s Worse Than You Think


Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

155.94

Word count

1,494

Sentence count

96

Harmful content

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The Canadian economy is in free fall, and the country is on the brink of a breakup. Why is this happening? What is happening to our economy and why is it happening now, and what can we do about it?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 The breakup of Canada has officially begun this year, as far as I'm concerned.
00:00:05.880 I mean, for the first time ever, Alberta has a referendum date set for the fall of 2026.
00:00:11.940 And then you have the Parti Québécois, who are leading in the polls, promising a referendum as soon as they get a chance.
00:00:19.480 The Canadian economy is now poorer than that of the state of Alabama.
00:00:23.960 Yes, you heard that right.
00:00:25.160 And while all of this is happening, Ottawa still acting like nothing's wrong. Nothing to see here. So the question is, are we still one country or are we watching the first stage of a breakup in real time? Think Yugoslavia 2.0.
00:00:43.660 And then you have the Premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith, stating for the record in a recent press conference that the province is headed to a referendum when all signature requirements are met.
00:00:55.620 Ontario inhabitants are now poorer per capita than inhabitants of Mississippi, and that's the poorest American state.
00:01:02.740 So the inhabitants of Canada's richest province are poorer than the inhabitants of the United
00:01:08.500 States poorest state.
00:01:10.500 And that's actually occurred primarily in the last 10 years.
00:01:17.860 And because we were basically at parity before that.
00:01:21.780 Canada's decline, intentional or due to incompetence.
00:01:26.420 A decade of policy failure.
00:01:28.260 That's what it really amounts to, right?
00:01:29.540 a decade of policy failure that has left canada poor we have 10 of the population now
00:01:37.620 below the poverty line and we have record numbers in food bank lineups
00:01:44.500 and our gdp per capita is a complete disconnect from the united states of america i mean they're
00:01:51.380 almost they're close to double what ours is right now it's absolutely crazy the leading indicators
00:01:56.660 point to economic decline here, economic winter,
00:02:01.600 where the opposite is true for the United States of America.
00:02:04.480 Investment flows into the United States,
00:02:06.400 including the Prime Minister himself has invested much of his wealth
00:02:11.200 into the United States of America, while Canada gets left behind.
00:02:15.580 So let me get this straight.
00:02:17.120 Mark Carney promised a booming economy.
00:02:20.140 And what did Canadians actually end up getting?
00:02:23.400 84,000 jobs gone in one month.
00:02:26.660 A total of 109,000 full-time jobs vanishing.
00:02:32.100 And then you have hours being cut across the country and massive layoffs.
00:02:36.700 But don't worry, Carney says, everything is going great, right?
00:02:41.720 Because when your paycheck shrinks, groceries double in price,
00:02:46.800 and young people can't find work,
00:02:49.320 that's apparently what success looks like in liberal Canada.
00:02:53.160 Because it's a debate amongst liberals and non-liberals, they say our economy is going great because the IMF says, the IMF is saying Canada is poised to be the tiger of the Western world.
00:03:06.860 And I see people in places, aside from downtown Toronto, fed by the government, and Ottawa, fed by their golden pensions, suffering gas prices, grocery prices, you know, rents, taxes.
00:03:20.260 People are really in trouble in Canada.
00:03:22.120 So why could the IMF say we're in such great shape 0.96
00:03:24.420 and other people saying Canada sucks?
00:03:26.580 Because they're a friend of Carney's. 0.96
00:03:28.460 He's in the international courts.
00:03:30.000 Of course they are.
00:03:30.820 This is the international financial elite
00:03:33.100 we're talking about here.
00:03:34.520 They're lying?
00:03:35.440 They're playing with numbers.
00:03:37.100 They're doing creative accounting.
00:03:38.680 You know, they say figures can lie and liars can figure.
00:03:41.460 Well, that's what we've got going on here.
00:03:43.700 So diversification for auto is not an option.
00:03:46.520 If we do not have U.S. access,
00:03:48.080 we do not have an auto industry.
00:03:49.180 that's just the bottom line so we really need to get this relationship right you would not build
00:03:54.620 cars in canada to ship to europe or to asia it just doesn't make commercial or economic sense
00:04:00.380 we happen to sit beside the largest most dynamic wealthiest economy in the world in the united
00:04:05.100 states this is the gravity model of trade you're going to do the most trade with the largest
00:04:08.860 economy that is geographically closest to you so uh well it would be nice to diversify not going
00:04:13.980 going to happen for auto. Remember the promise? Canada was supposed to be the fastest growing
00:04:18.800 economy in the G7. Instead, Canada now has some of the highest food inflation and rising unemployment.
00:04:27.440 Full-time jobs are disappearing. Young workers are getting hit first. And economists are warning
00:04:33.500 that the labor market is starting to crack. But don't expect Ottawa to admit there's a problem.
00:04:40.060 Because in liberal politics, if you just say that the economy is strong enough times,
00:04:45.840 maybe Canadians will end up believing it.
00:04:50.400 And so the IMF created, are they using, you mentioned to me one time,
00:04:55.760 the IMF includes something with the wealth of Canada's pension plans.
00:04:59.540 Yeah, yeah. There's several aspects of it.
00:05:02.420 They don't factor in, an awful lot of countries don't have provinces that have provincial debt.
00:05:07.100 We have massive provincial debt in Canada.
00:05:08.960 So often you see comparisons, just federal debt to federal debt.
00:05:12.740 And the IMF does factor in provinces to some extent,
00:05:16.340 but not accurately, according to an awful lot of experts.
00:05:19.140 But the CPP thing, the Canada Pension Plan,
00:05:21.280 is really the big kahuna here that counts.
00:05:24.920 We have almost $800 billion, 0.73
00:05:28.380 which is like almost a trillion dollars in our CPP right now,
00:05:31.420 which is good, which is good.
00:05:32.660 We want it to be there for pensions for Canadians in the future.
00:05:35.720 So that's not a bad thing.
00:05:36.920 However, other countries do not have a funded public pension plan like Canada does.
00:05:43.040 And what Canada does is include that as an asset against liabilities, against debt.
00:05:48.080 So if you include that as an asset, that means the government thinks it can dip into it if it needs to, to offset some of these debts.
00:05:58.140 It's not their money. It's our money.
00:06:00.160 It is Canadian employers and employees' money that went into that, and the government cannot dip into it.
00:06:05.600 It is not truly an asset.
00:06:07.400 This is the part that really gets me.
00:06:09.600 The liberals keep telling Canadians that things are better than ever.
00:06:13.900 Better? Really?
00:06:15.980 Food prices up, housing unaffordable, full-time jobs disappearing, 0.83
00:06:20.980 and young people can't even get started.
00:06:23.440 But according to Mark Carney, the economy is doing fantastic.
00:06:27.280 Sure, if by fantastic you mean working harder, paying more, and getting less,
00:06:34.060 Welcome to the liberal version of economic success.
00:06:38.160 Joining me now is senior economist with the Canadian Labour Congress, D.T. Cochran.
00:06:42.480 Thank you, sir, for being here.
00:06:44.200 So Canada lost roughly 84,000 jobs last month and employment ticking up to 6.7%.
00:06:51.200 What do these numbers tell us about where the labour market could be heading?
00:06:55.820 The really important story of this month's release are when we break down those job losses by full-time and part-time.
00:07:03.520 The 84,000 jobs lost is actually 109,000 full-time jobs lost with a gain of 25,000 jobs.
00:07:12.660 So this could be employers are starting to cut hours because the uncertainty of the economy
00:07:19.880 means they can't keep holding on to the employees that they have been holding on to.
00:07:25.020 The layoff rate has actually been remarkably low, but we might be at this tipping point
00:07:30.060 where a flood of job losses is about to come.
00:07:34.280 Very interesting.
00:07:36.060 Today's report shows full-time jobs and youth employment taking significant losses.
00:07:41.200 Which workers or sectors appear most vulnerable right now?
00:07:44.520 And what does that tell us about inequality and job quality in Canada's labour market?
00:07:49.880 The youth unemployment rate was at generational highs for much of 2025.
00:07:57.280 And then it improved towards the end.
00:07:59.300 but now it's heading back up. So the trend of unemployment was falling, and it's unclear if
00:08:05.460 we're hitting a sort of steady state around 6.7 percent, which is still too high. But it's also
00:08:11.800 possible that we are about to see the overall unemployment rate climb with youth serving as
00:08:17.640 canaries in the coal mine. And the fact that the majority of the job losses were in the private
00:08:22.320 sector indicate that this is for-profit businesses no longer able to hold on to the employees
00:08:29.000 as uncertainty only grows this is how canada's paying for its trump derangement syndrome right
00:08:35.560 here the canadian dollar is being dumped from foreign exchange reserves at a record pace
00:08:41.500 what is going on and it has not come out of the low 70s to the u.s dollar the canadian looney
00:08:49.540 it's still sitting at 70 something cents i think 72 73 cents and it's only bound to get worse
00:08:56.880 because it's being dumped from foreign exchange reserves at record paces.
00:09:01.880 Billions and billions of dollars are being dumped.
00:09:04.720 A net outflow of a trillion dollars of investment in the last decade alone, according to RBC.
00:09:13.240 Twice as much investment has left Canada as returned under the Liberals, according to RBC.
00:09:19.360 And we have twice as many Canadians opening businesses abroad as they do at home.
00:09:24.460 more opening businesses in the United States, more Canadians opening businesses in the United
00:09:29.320 States than here at home. That's not elbows up, that's elbows out.