The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - Mark Carney Crumbles on Recession Questions – Liberals in Freefall

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here, and welcome back to the National Telegraph YouTube channel.

00:00:06.320 Back in February, the polling firm Angus Reid had the Mark Carney liberals leading the peer

00:00:11.820 poly of conservatives by 13 percent. And now in June, that lead has shrunk to just five percent.

00:00:20.500 Very clearly, the recession has hurt the Carney liberals, despite all of the spin coming both from

00:00:27.240 the Liberal Party as well as the legacy media. In fact, I think that Mark Carney has been hurting

00:00:33.980 himself trying to justify how we're not in a real recession because every time he talks about it,

00:00:40.960 he has to admit that the economy is still quite weak or he ends up just going into such flat

00:00:47.840 denials. It makes him look far more insecure about the problem than he would be if he just said,

00:00:52.940 yeah, you know, Canada is in a bit of a recession period, but we're going to bounce back quick.

00:00:57.620 If he just said that, it'd be perfect. In this video, I want to go over an interview he did

00:01:02.880 with an Irish media outlet when they asked him about the recession. And then I want to jump over

00:01:07.900 to a CTV news segment where they invited on a guest who is just very clearly trying to do

00:01:14.200 propaganda for the Liberal Party and not doing a very good job at it. But before we get into the

00:01:19.360 videos. I just want to remind you guys, if you like the channel, make sure to leave a like on

00:01:23.420 the video, subscribe if you are not yet a subscriber, and consider hitting the join

00:01:27.340 button to become a monthly contributing member of the National Telegraph. Anyways, without further

00:01:33.000 ado, let us first start off with this video that a liberal poster on X actually thought made Carney

00:01:40.420 look good. This guy, Stefano Barbaras, says, PM Carney laying down the truth. Now check this out.

00:01:49.360 Is it realistic for Canada to shift away from the US, this massive trading partner on your

00:01:54.040 doorstep? You are so reliant on them for your exports. And I note that Canada has entered a

00:01:58.960 technical recession this year. It's a tricky time for Canada. You're not liking him bringing that

00:02:04.800 up. You can tell he's getting a bit uncomfortable with his tight face contortions. Do you not need

00:02:11.200 the U.S. So Canada, we just are April GDP figures are very strong. We're OK. Does that does that

00:02:18.940 erase the last two quarters of a shrinking GDP? Plus, April's numbers can be good, but that's 0.98

00:02:25.400 simply recovering from the decline. That's I always hate when there's a big decline in the

00:02:31.520 economy and then the next month's much better. And people are like, oh, my goodness, the economy's

00:02:35.700 booming again. It's like, no, we stepped into a dirt hole and we have slightly come out of the

00:02:42.240 hole now. We're not even all the way out of the hole, but we are slightly out of it. That isn't

00:02:47.320 a good thing that we've basically not moved at all, even if our April numbers are good. But he

00:02:53.780 doesn't actually want to contend whether we're in a recession or not, because that would be a very

00:02:58.440 bad look as it was back when he was fighting with Pierre Polyev about it in question period.

00:03:03.520 creating jobs over the last year, twice the rate of the United States. Foreign investment in Canada

00:03:08.640 is twice the rate of the United States is far and away highest in the G7. Our export growth is up

00:03:15.060 sharply away from the United States. Business investments up 10% machinery equipment. The

00:03:19.680 Canadian economy is transforming itself. Now, you don't transform overnight, but you do transform

00:03:25.600 when the world changes. By the way, all of those things he's mentioning would be picked up in the

00:03:31.560 GDP numbers. Unless he's saying that it just started right after the first quarter of 2026,

00:03:37.380 and that's why you're not seeing it. If all these big investments were being made at the start of

00:03:42.520 2026, because he's been ballyhooing this for a while now, if this has been going on, it would

00:03:47.540 have been picked up by the GDP. It's not like all these investments happen and we only record them

00:03:51.620 later. If money is coming in to start new businesses and workers are being hired left and

00:03:57.100 right we would see it in the numbers and so far in 2026 despite the seasonal workers in the summer

00:04:03.100 despite the census workers despite seasonal construction and all this stuff we have a

00:04:09.340 depressed job market still our unemployment rate is still much worse than the united states they're

00:04:15.420 at like 4.5 4.3 we're at 6.6 right now used to be 6.9 but the summer jobs boom helped a little bit

00:04:24.060 but it wasn't like Carney created that boom.

00:04:26.400 It pretty much happens every year.

00:04:28.240 Maybe it's a little more elevated this year

00:04:29.720 because of FIFA and the census,

00:04:31.180 but it's not surprising that we took those jobs in.

00:04:33.760 But we're still negative, like 24,000 to 40,000 jobs

00:04:38.040 that we had at the beginning of the year

00:04:40.640 that have fallen off.

00:04:41.700 And that's not counting the seasonal job drop-off

00:04:44.140 from December, 2025.

00:04:46.540 Changing because the technology is changing.

00:04:48.660 Look, it's the U.S.'s right to change

00:04:50.600 how they conduct their trade policy.

00:04:52.800 we're reacting to that

00:04:54.600 and we're building

00:04:55.140 But is it not hitting you

00:04:56.100 when you look at the

00:04:56.760 economic figures

00:04:57.400 No, well I

00:04:58.400 look

00:04:58.700 we always want

00:05:00.160 the economy to improve

00:05:01.400 and it's not going

00:05:02.240 transformations don't

00:05:03.620 happen overnight

00:05:04.260 but this is

00:05:05.240 we're a triple A country

00:05:06.280 we're a triple A country

00:05:07.840 we have the best

00:05:08.400 fiscal position

00:05:09.360 by far

00:05:10.300 of anyone in the G7

00:05:11.380 we're able to

00:05:12.520 support Canadians

00:05:13.540 through higher

00:05:15.180 food prices

00:05:15.740 because of the Gulf War

00:05:16.740 higher fuel prices

00:05:18.600 we can provide

00:05:19.480 support

00:05:20.180 and we are

00:05:20.740 to 12 million Canadians

00:05:22.800 What 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.

00:05:39.620 And 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.

00:06:04.700 Because 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.

00:06:20.500 Whatever your metrics are, suck if you can have all of this stuff happening in the Canadian economy and still be growing.

00:06:26.340 But then he brings up, oh, well, do you know that we're supporting people on fuel prices and at the grocery store?

00:06:32.800 That's not a sign of strength, Carney.

00:06:34.700 Other countries are not passing big welfare programs in order to be able to make sure that

00:06:40.220 people can buy groceries. Yes, other countries are struggling, but we're struggling far more

00:06:45.940 than a lot of the other G7 countries. But now I want to move into this segment from CTV News,

00:06:51.620 and I usually really like Vashi Capellos, but man, this is not a good segment,

00:06:57.380 and it's mostly because of the guests they have on from RBC.

00:07:00.500 Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklin this week pouring some cold water on concerns

00:07:04.600 the country is in a technical recession, but conceding things have flatlined. The issue has

00:07:09.040 dominated debate in the House of Commons for weeks since Statistics Canada data showed a contraction

00:07:13.820 of GDP on an annualized basis in the last two quarters. And by the way, you are losing a debate

00:07:19.960 if you are trying to tell people whether it's a stagnant economy or it's a real recession because

00:07:27.760 we've had two quarters of negative growth. As soon as you are trying to debate that,

00:07:33.320 you are losing the political debate because people don't want to hear that

00:07:37.400 from the guy, Mark Carney, who was pitched as a financial guru.

00:07:41.960 In the definition of a technical recession, despite the central banker's assessment,

00:07:46.040 conservative leader Pierre Polyev continued to criticize the liberals over it this week.

00:07:50.100 He used the word weak to defy, to describe this prime minister's economy nine times.

00:07:57.920 That translates into lost jobs, lost homes, and bigger lineups at food banks.

00:08:02.640 Will the prime minister stand today, reverse the liberal policies that caused this recession?

00:08:06.760 Well, the leader of the opposition chooses to cherry pick points.

00:08:10.340 What 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.

00:08:21.820 I always hate whenever they bring up those points.

00:08:24.180 And so obvious.

00:08:25.460 I know it's almost trite to say at this point.

00:08:26.900 guys do you think Italy the UK Germany France aren't closer to where the wars are happening

00:08:34.420 in Ukraine and Iran they've been dealing with energy issues for like a few years now since the

00:08:42.300 war started in Ukraine and somehow Germany is doing far better than Canada is you could say

00:08:48.460 well they're surrounded by trading partners and they can't be cut off by America well Karen kept

00:08:52.820 saying we have the best deal with America still. We still have the best trade deal. So why aren't

00:08:57.000 we suffering the least? It's almost like there is one, actually the tariffs are hurting us more than

00:09:02.920 Carney wants to let on. And we wonder why he's not taking it as seriously as he is based on that

00:09:08.660 fact. And also our domestic policy sucks. The domestic policy is always going to be the biggest 0.99

00:09:14.740 driver of growth. If you want to increase the size of the Canadian economy, decrease the size of

00:09:21.860 government. It's that simple. Here to dig into all of it, Francis Donald is RBC's chief economist

00:09:28.700 and Amanda Lang is CTV's chief financial correspondent. Hi to both of you. Thanks

00:09:32.440 very much for making the time. Francis, I'll start with you. We just heard a whole bunch

00:09:35.360 of different characterizations of the economy. How would you characterize the state of Canada's

00:09:40.320 economy right now? This is why we're making the video today. Her answer here at the start

00:09:46.980 is annoying a man who whatever her name is francis's answer is terrible i hate the kind of

00:09:54.660 weird kicking the can it's just like it's just basically pretending away the problems at the

00:10:00.620 same time she still has to admit it because she's still an economist she's supposed to you know

00:10:05.020 understand the economy the canadian economy is stagnant it effectively hasn't grown in the past

00:10:11.780 year and yet what lies ahead already seems to be looking better the unemployment rate appears as

00:10:18.760 though it will continue to decline and growth will probably pick up the big challenge the problem is

00:10:25.040 is when people say this they are the same people who thought we were going to grow in the fourth

00:10:31.420 quarter of 2025 who thought we were going to grow in the first quarter of 2026 we keep hearing well

00:10:38.860 guys, it sucks now, but around the corner, it's going to be better. Around the corner has been a

00:10:44.340 lot of corners so far. And every time we turn the corner, it still sucks. Now, no doubt the summer 0.97

00:10:50.980 jobs bump, FIFA, the census, that's going to inject some artificial, you know, some artificial

00:10:57.560 cash into the economy. The GDP is going to go up a little bit, and the unemployment rate is going

00:11:03.100 a fall. We've already had a fall from 6.9% to 6.6%. But that's kind of the things that you always

00:11:10.060 expect. You're going to do road repairs in the summer, renovations happen in the summer, a lot

00:11:14.220 of other seasonal work. You have the census, you have a lot of the hotel and food industries,

00:11:19.760 the food industry that hires a lot more people during the summer. And of course, you have FIFA

00:11:25.080 that isn't going to be here next year or probably the year after that. FIFA is not coming back to

00:11:29.940 North America for a while, and that's been an artificial driver of the job growth, is 24,000

00:11:36.620 jobs basically being connected to or being preserved by FIFA over the summer. That's not

00:11:42.500 something that we should exactly be celebrating, the fact that we still have a far higher unemployment

00:11:47.020 rate than the United States, and we're getting all these artificial helps with our unemployment rate.

00:11:52.160 A lot of the enthusiasm around Canadian growth and what's coming next comes from government

00:11:57.920 policies and a shift towards projects, infrastructure, resources. But we're not

00:12:02.940 going to feel those in the economy in 2026. We might start to feel them in 2027.

00:12:08.380 So notice what we're doing. She said that, okay, we're the economy stagnant.

00:12:15.020 That doesn't help anyone. You know, people, again, if you're starting to argue, it's not a

00:12:19.400 recession, it's just stagnation. Nobody's satisfied by that. And then she said, well,

00:12:23.500 already seems like things are going to get better around the corner at some point, but it's not

00:12:29.240 going to be this year. So don't expect anything big this year. In 2027, we might see the effects.

00:12:35.320 You could see the effects next week if you just cut taxes. If they just cut taxes, 20% across the

00:12:42.780 board cuts, and this is what I want the Conservative Party to advocate for, a 20% across the board cut

00:12:48.020 in taxes, including corporate, and a point off the GST, you would immediately see an economic boom

00:12:53.740 because people want to move or they don't pay as much of their revenues to the government.

00:12:59.500 Who could have guessed? People don't like paying taxes. People don't like having to follow

00:13:03.120 arbitrary regulations. If we solve those problems, we would get a lot more done rather than bloated

00:13:08.720 government projects that are going to be over budget and are only adding to the GDP simply

00:13:13.400 because they burn a lot of money, not because they're actually productive in the long run.

00:13:18.460 Now, some of the projects are probably worth it. Others really aren't. Again, if you just cut tax

00:13:24.080 and regulations, the government wouldn't be having to back these projects. They would just be going

00:13:28.620 out the door and getting done themselves. So in the meantime, we've got to cross this bridge to

00:13:33.460 the other side and there are no real growth engines between now and the other side of that

00:13:38.260 bridge. That means growth around zero to 1% is probably where our trend lies. What this isn't

00:13:44.560 is a recession. And it's not a technical recession either. There's no economist that says two quarters

00:13:50.760 of negative GDP is a technical recession. That's like the dictionary definition of what a recession

00:13:57.420 is. That is the technical definition of what a recession is. Now, usually, now that you can

00:14:04.120 always use other metrics. Let's just say you're only in a recession technically because the plague

00:14:10.960 hit and like 3% of your population died and the recession came in because you just lost a bunch

00:14:16.880 of people. At the same time, the areas of the economy that are still growing or we're doing

00:14:22.340 well are still growing and everything's very healthy. And you could say, well, it's not really

00:14:25.560 a recession. That is only technically a recession. I think we can all understand the GDP is down

00:14:30.320 because we just lost a bunch of people fair enough now people are trying to say that well

00:14:34.640 we're only in a recession because we lost population from immigration from people going home

00:14:39.360 it's like okay um so we're admitting that we've probably been in a recession for years now

00:14:44.480 and the only way we've been staying out of it is by pretending to have growth simply by importing

00:14:50.240 people into the country because you can technically generate gb gdp growth by just letting people in

00:14:56.160 the door even if they aren't even working when they get here as long as they had a nickel in

00:15:00.000 their pocket they have technically added to the gdp by bringing it into the country so by having

00:15:05.760 the gp go down and saying well it's just because immigration levels are so low now it's like

00:15:11.600 yeah we've revealed that we've been in a recession for a long time by lowering immigration i just

00:15:18.080 hate the talking points here from her all the stuff about how like oh well also she's revealing

00:15:23.920 the fact we're gonna have zero to one percent growth well the liberals still think we're

00:15:27.280 we're going to have 1.3 percent growth so she's just revealed that even rbc doesn't think we're

00:15:31.480 going to hit the very low growth targets that the liberals have and also like her bringing up that

00:15:37.780 like i need to go back and listen to this again a little bit i i just find all this just so

00:15:43.040 convoluted and just like she's dodging the point the economy sucks if the if the government's 0.66

00:15:52.020 having to drive it. Bridge, that means growth around zero to one percent is probably where our 0.98

00:15:57.420 trend lies. What this isn't is a recession and it's not a technical recession either. It is a

00:16:04.320 recession. All the other metrics would indicate it's a recession. Declining GDP, job numbers are

00:16:11.400 not good in the year 2026 so far, despite the summer jobs boom and all the artificial jobs that

00:16:17.200 creating with the census and fifa foreclosures are up defaulting on people's debt is up like what

00:16:24.560 does she want food bank usage is up like what metric is making us look great there's no economist

00:16:30.400 that says two quarters of negative gdp is a technical recession that's not how we describe

00:16:35.600 it uh this is just very very slow growth and maybe even we could see it's just very very slow growth

00:16:42.000 and that's why it's been negative for the last two quarters and in fact three out of the last four

00:16:46.160 quarters. Like, shut up. No economist measures it this way. Where did you steal your economics 0.99

00:16:52.220 degree from, lady? Oh, no, no economist would ever consider two quarters of stagnation,

00:17:00.620 a recession. Like, well, we're not stagnating. We're declining. Maybe we're growing a little

00:17:05.960 bit in April and maybe we'll grow a bit in the second quarter of 2026. But that's a different

00:17:11.620 argument entirely of whether or not we're going to recover from the recession. It's still a

00:17:16.680 recession. Vision that lifts that negative, barely negative Q1 higher again. So the problem with the

00:17:23.900 recession line isn't that it, you know, is describing slow growth. It's that it's the

00:17:29.780 wrong diagnosis. We've got other problems that need to be treated and we need to treat them

00:17:34.000 appropriately. So what's the difference, Amanda, because it has become such a political inflection

00:17:40.960 point like what how would you describe the state of the economy and what is the difference between

00:17:46.080 labeling at a recession slash technical recession or not so of course the opposition is using it as

00:17:52.380 an issue to show government mismanagement and that's actually to me where it falls down it

00:17:56.900 falls down on the economic data the bank of canada came out not just this week but immediately after

00:18:02.080 the gdp it's it's deputies were out saying we're not in a recession everybody calm down but you

00:18:07.900 Oh, 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.

00:18:24.200 If anything, the Bank of Canada's job, in a lot of ways, is to calm things down and keep it kind of feeling normal.

00:18:30.860 So it's just such a crap excuse to be like, well, they said it's not, ergo it's not.

00:18:35.680 We're looking at the wrong metrics. 0.97

00:18:37.340 Well, the Conservatives shouldn't be blaming the government on this or government mismanagement.

00:18:42.260 Who should we be blaming? Trump? Iran?

00:18:46.660 Yes, tariffs suck. 0.97

00:18:47.920 At 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

00:19:04.160 The 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.

00:19:12.540 Anyways, actually, I don't even want to finish with the segment.

00:19:15.560 You guys understand what it is.

00:19:16.960 the media wants to basically just kind of keep confusing the conversation rather than

00:19:21.600 just talking about the fact the economy sucks we can't talk about how the economy sucks so they

00:19:26.700 instead want to focus on how you know people are overreacting they're over labeling what we're in

00:19:32.320 it's a technical recession i don't know what to do for you guys and if you're really gonna argue

00:19:37.520 well it's not a recession it's just massive stagnation it's like okay you is that a good

00:19:43.180 thing? Are we supposed to be happy about that? Anyways, with all that being said, thank you guys

00:19:49.220 for watching. Make sure you like, share, subscribe, and I'll see you guys all later. I'm flying back

00:19:55.600 to Calgary in a second here. I didn't give enough context. I've been in Kelowna, and we just did a

00:19:59.380 1BC rally in a Kelowna city center, the Parkinson Center yesterday, and it was fantastic. I should

00:20:06.540 be doing another video at some point on what we've been doing with 1BC, because despite the

00:20:11.120 election of Carrie Lynn Finley as the new BC Conservative Party leader all of our rallies have

00:20:15.420 been about the same size right now because frankly at the moment the BC Conservatives really haven't

00:20:20.680 changed anything and it's early days for Carrie Lynn Finley but at the moment the Conservatives

00:20:25.120 need to like actually figure out how to be Conservative again rather than simply just

00:20:28.820 assuming that if they swap out the leader everything's going to be okay but that's me

00:20:33.840 now kind of planning another video at the end of this video stay tuned maybe I'll make something

00:20:38.520 on that. But anyways, with all that being said, thank you guys for watching and I'll see you all

00:20:42.020 next time.

The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - June 15, 2026

Mark Carney Crumbles on Recession Questions – Liberals in Freefall

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