00:05:22.800What was that? Like that was just such a strange answer to give to foreign media rather than actually answering the question about whether or not it would be good to have a better trading relationship with the United States and whether that has hurt us by not having as good of a relationship with the current tariff situation.
00:05:39.620And you can blame that on the US. But then you have to blame the Canadian government for not reacting to it properly. If you're going to diversify trade away, you're going to make Canada stronger economy, cut taxes and regulations. He doesn't want to do that because he's a liberal. And so he has to basically pretend that everything is all good. And don't worry, we have the best fiscal position in the G7. I don't even know what that means.
00:06:04.700Because apparently you can have jobs falling off, you can have the GDP declining, at the very least the economy is stagnating, maybe not in a full recession, but we're stagnant, and somehow you can still be topping the charts of the G7.
00:06:20.500Whatever your metrics are, suck if you can have all of this stuff happening in the Canadian economy and still be growing.
00:06:26.340But then he brings up, oh, well, do you know that we're supporting people on fuel prices and at the grocery store?
00:06:32.800That's not a sign of strength, Carney.
00:06:34.700Other countries are not passing big welfare programs in order to be able to make sure that
00:06:40.220people can buy groceries. Yes, other countries are struggling, but we're struggling far more
00:06:45.940than a lot of the other G7 countries. But now I want to move into this segment from CTV News,
00:06:51.620and I usually really like Vashi Capellos, but man, this is not a good segment,
00:06:57.380and it's mostly because of the guests they have on from RBC.
00:07:00.500Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklin this week pouring some cold water on concerns
00:07:04.600the country is in a technical recession, but conceding things have flatlined. The issue has
00:07:09.040dominated debate in the House of Commons for weeks since Statistics Canada data showed a contraction
00:07:13.820of GDP on an annualized basis in the last two quarters. And by the way, you are losing a debate
00:07:19.960if you are trying to tell people whether it's a stagnant economy or it's a real recession because
00:07:27.760we've had two quarters of negative growth. As soon as you are trying to debate that,
00:07:33.320you are losing the political debate because people don't want to hear that
00:07:37.400from the guy, Mark Carney, who was pitched as a financial guru.
00:07:41.960In the definition of a technical recession, despite the central banker's assessment,
00:07:46.040conservative leader Pierre Polyev continued to criticize the liberals over it this week.
00:07:50.100He used the word weak to defy, to describe this prime minister's economy nine times.
00:07:57.920That translates into lost jobs, lost homes, and bigger lineups at food banks.
00:08:02.640Will the prime minister stand today, reverse the liberal policies that caused this recession?
00:08:06.760Well, the leader of the opposition chooses to cherry pick points.
00:08:10.340What we know is the head of the Bank of Canada said our economy continues to show real resilience in the face of illegal and unjust tariffs and in the face of two economy destroying wars.
00:08:21.820I always hate whenever they bring up those points.
00:08:25.460I know it's almost trite to say at this point.
00:08:26.900guys do you think Italy the UK Germany France aren't closer to where the wars are happening
00:08:34.420in Ukraine and Iran they've been dealing with energy issues for like a few years now since the
00:08:42.300war started in Ukraine and somehow Germany is doing far better than Canada is you could say
00:08:48.460well they're surrounded by trading partners and they can't be cut off by America well Karen kept
00:08:52.820saying we have the best deal with America still. We still have the best trade deal. So why aren't
00:08:57.000we suffering the least? It's almost like there is one, actually the tariffs are hurting us more than
00:09:02.920Carney wants to let on. And we wonder why he's not taking it as seriously as he is based on that
00:09:08.660fact. And also our domestic policy sucks. The domestic policy is always going to be the biggest0.99
00:09:14.740driver of growth. If you want to increase the size of the Canadian economy, decrease the size of
00:09:21.860government. It's that simple. Here to dig into all of it, Francis Donald is RBC's chief economist
00:09:28.700and Amanda Lang is CTV's chief financial correspondent. Hi to both of you. Thanks
00:09:32.440very much for making the time. Francis, I'll start with you. We just heard a whole bunch
00:09:35.360of different characterizations of the economy. How would you characterize the state of Canada's
00:09:40.320economy right now? This is why we're making the video today. Her answer here at the start
00:09:46.980is annoying a man who whatever her name is francis's answer is terrible i hate the kind of
00:09:54.660weird kicking the can it's just like it's just basically pretending away the problems at the
00:10:00.620same time she still has to admit it because she's still an economist she's supposed to you know
00:10:05.020understand the economy the canadian economy is stagnant it effectively hasn't grown in the past
00:10:11.780year and yet what lies ahead already seems to be looking better the unemployment rate appears as
00:10:18.760though it will continue to decline and growth will probably pick up the big challenge the problem is
00:10:25.040is when people say this they are the same people who thought we were going to grow in the fourth
00:10:31.420quarter of 2025 who thought we were going to grow in the first quarter of 2026 we keep hearing well
00:10:38.860guys, it sucks now, but around the corner, it's going to be better. Around the corner has been a
00:10:44.340lot of corners so far. And every time we turn the corner, it still sucks. Now, no doubt the summer0.97
00:10:50.980jobs bump, FIFA, the census, that's going to inject some artificial, you know, some artificial
00:10:57.560cash into the economy. The GDP is going to go up a little bit, and the unemployment rate is going
00:11:03.100a fall. We've already had a fall from 6.9% to 6.6%. But that's kind of the things that you always
00:11:10.060expect. You're going to do road repairs in the summer, renovations happen in the summer, a lot
00:11:14.220of other seasonal work. You have the census, you have a lot of the hotel and food industries,
00:11:19.760the food industry that hires a lot more people during the summer. And of course, you have FIFA
00:11:25.080that isn't going to be here next year or probably the year after that. FIFA is not coming back to
00:11:29.940North America for a while, and that's been an artificial driver of the job growth, is 24,000
00:11:36.620jobs basically being connected to or being preserved by FIFA over the summer. That's not
00:11:42.500something that we should exactly be celebrating, the fact that we still have a far higher unemployment
00:11:47.020rate than the United States, and we're getting all these artificial helps with our unemployment rate.
00:11:52.160A lot of the enthusiasm around Canadian growth and what's coming next comes from government
00:11:57.920policies and a shift towards projects, infrastructure, resources. But we're not
00:12:02.940going to feel those in the economy in 2026. We might start to feel them in 2027.
00:12:08.380So notice what we're doing. She said that, okay, we're the economy stagnant.
00:12:15.020That doesn't help anyone. You know, people, again, if you're starting to argue, it's not a
00:12:19.400recession, it's just stagnation. Nobody's satisfied by that. And then she said, well,
00:12:23.500already seems like things are going to get better around the corner at some point, but it's not
00:12:29.240going to be this year. So don't expect anything big this year. In 2027, we might see the effects.
00:12:35.320You could see the effects next week if you just cut taxes. If they just cut taxes, 20% across the
00:12:42.780board cuts, and this is what I want the Conservative Party to advocate for, a 20% across the board cut
00:12:48.020in taxes, including corporate, and a point off the GST, you would immediately see an economic boom
00:12:53.740because people want to move or they don't pay as much of their revenues to the government.
00:12:59.500Who could have guessed? People don't like paying taxes. People don't like having to follow
00:13:03.120arbitrary regulations. If we solve those problems, we would get a lot more done rather than bloated
00:13:08.720government projects that are going to be over budget and are only adding to the GDP simply
00:13:13.400because they burn a lot of money, not because they're actually productive in the long run.
00:13:18.460Now, some of the projects are probably worth it. Others really aren't. Again, if you just cut tax
00:13:24.080and regulations, the government wouldn't be having to back these projects. They would just be going
00:13:28.620out the door and getting done themselves. So in the meantime, we've got to cross this bridge to
00:13:33.460the other side and there are no real growth engines between now and the other side of that
00:13:38.260bridge. That means growth around zero to 1% is probably where our trend lies. What this isn't
00:13:44.560is a recession. And it's not a technical recession either. There's no economist that says two quarters
00:13:50.760of negative GDP is a technical recession. That's like the dictionary definition of what a recession
00:13:57.420is. That is the technical definition of what a recession is. Now, usually, now that you can
00:14:04.120always use other metrics. Let's just say you're only in a recession technically because the plague
00:14:10.960hit and like 3% of your population died and the recession came in because you just lost a bunch
00:14:16.880of people. At the same time, the areas of the economy that are still growing or we're doing
00:14:22.340well are still growing and everything's very healthy. And you could say, well, it's not really
00:14:25.560a recession. That is only technically a recession. I think we can all understand the GDP is down
00:14:30.320because we just lost a bunch of people fair enough now people are trying to say that well
00:14:34.640we're only in a recession because we lost population from immigration from people going home
00:14:39.360it's like okay um so we're admitting that we've probably been in a recession for years now
00:14:44.480and the only way we've been staying out of it is by pretending to have growth simply by importing
00:14:50.240people into the country because you can technically generate gb gdp growth by just letting people in
00:14:56.160the door even if they aren't even working when they get here as long as they had a nickel in
00:15:00.000their pocket they have technically added to the gdp by bringing it into the country so by having
00:15:05.760the gp go down and saying well it's just because immigration levels are so low now it's like
00:15:11.600yeah we've revealed that we've been in a recession for a long time by lowering immigration i just
00:15:18.080hate the talking points here from her all the stuff about how like oh well also she's revealing
00:15:23.920the fact we're gonna have zero to one percent growth well the liberals still think we're
00:15:27.280we're going to have 1.3 percent growth so she's just revealed that even rbc doesn't think we're
00:15:31.480going to hit the very low growth targets that the liberals have and also like her bringing up that
00:15:37.780like i need to go back and listen to this again a little bit i i just find all this just so
00:15:43.040convoluted and just like she's dodging the point the economy sucks if the if the government's0.66
00:15:52.020having to drive it. Bridge, that means growth around zero to one percent is probably where our0.98
00:15:57.420trend lies. What this isn't is a recession and it's not a technical recession either. It is a
00:16:04.320recession. All the other metrics would indicate it's a recession. Declining GDP, job numbers are
00:16:11.400not good in the year 2026 so far, despite the summer jobs boom and all the artificial jobs that
00:16:17.200creating with the census and fifa foreclosures are up defaulting on people's debt is up like what
00:16:24.560does she want food bank usage is up like what metric is making us look great there's no economist
00:16:30.400that says two quarters of negative gdp is a technical recession that's not how we describe
00:16:35.600it uh this is just very very slow growth and maybe even we could see it's just very very slow growth
00:16:42.000and that's why it's been negative for the last two quarters and in fact three out of the last four
00:16:46.160quarters. Like, shut up. No economist measures it this way. Where did you steal your economics0.99
00:16:52.220degree from, lady? Oh, no, no economist would ever consider two quarters of stagnation,
00:17:00.620a recession. Like, well, we're not stagnating. We're declining. Maybe we're growing a little
00:17:05.960bit in April and maybe we'll grow a bit in the second quarter of 2026. But that's a different
00:17:11.620argument entirely of whether or not we're going to recover from the recession. It's still a
00:17:16.680recession. Vision that lifts that negative, barely negative Q1 higher again. So the problem with the
00:17:23.900recession line isn't that it, you know, is describing slow growth. It's that it's the
00:17:29.780wrong diagnosis. We've got other problems that need to be treated and we need to treat them
00:17:34.000appropriately. So what's the difference, Amanda, because it has become such a political inflection
00:17:40.960point like what how would you describe the state of the economy and what is the difference between
00:17:46.080labeling at a recession slash technical recession or not so of course the opposition is using it as
00:17:52.380an issue to show government mismanagement and that's actually to me where it falls down it
00:17:56.900falls down on the economic data the bank of canada came out not just this week but immediately after
00:18:02.080the gdp it's it's deputies were out saying we're not in a recession everybody calm down but you
00:18:07.900Oh, the Bank of Canada says that we're doing fine, then I guess it's okay. Who could have guessed that that government entity would not want people to lose confidence in the government? And they're willing to say, well, just because it's a little bit of GDP decline, we'll say it's not really a recession because it will calm people down.
00:18:24.200If anything, the Bank of Canada's job, in a lot of ways, is to calm things down and keep it kind of feeling normal.
00:18:30.860So it's just such a crap excuse to be like, well, they said it's not, ergo it's not.
00:18:35.680We're looking at the wrong metrics.0.97
00:18:37.340Well, the Conservatives shouldn't be blaming the government on this or government mismanagement.
00:18:42.260Who should we be blaming? Trump? Iran?
00:18:47.920At the same time, all of these issues around tariffs, immigration going down, population going down, it's all just revealing that we've been in a recession for years without noticing it because of all the artificial boosting we've had from immigration.0.64
00:19:04.160The tariff threat from the U.S. should not be hurting a healthy economy as much as it's currently hurting Canada because we're not a healthy economy.
00:19:12.540Anyways, actually, I don't even want to finish with the segment.