Ottawa, ON – After 11 years of Liberals, Canada now has the highest household debt, the worst housing costs and the second-highest unemployment rate in the G7. Today, Carney had a chance to show he would reverse their decade of damage after it was confirmed that he is now leading the only G20 country in a recession.
Carney’s rhetoric about building the second-fastest-growing economy is facing the reality of real Gross Domestic Product falling in three of the four quarters he’s been Prime Minister. In the last two consecutive quarters, Canada’s GDP shrank 1 per cent and the next by 0.1 per cent.
This is the direct result of Liberal policies that have pushed investment out as business capital investment fell by 0.7 per cent in the first quarter of the year – the fifth consecutive quarter of decline. The Liberals have tried to brand this recession as “technical.” There is nothing technical for the 112,000 Canadians now out of work in just the first four months of the year.
The unemployment rate is now 6.9 per cent and far from ‘Canada Strong,’ Food Banks Canada reported that “a country cannot be strong and resilient when so many of its people are struggling to meet their essential needs.”
While Canadians are facing the economic costs, Carney’s Liberals continued to deny the reality of their recession. Ryan Turnbull, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance, claimed that “the Canadian economy remains resilient.” Kevin Lamoureux, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, said that “we have the best financial position of the G7 countries.”
When asked numerous times, Carney refused to admit that he had led Canada into a recession. That’s despite his admission on Tuesday of “some weakness” in the economy “because of some decisions by the government.” Even after admitting his policies have created this recession, he still refuses to even use the word despite being confronted with stories of how Canadians are struggling from this Liberal recession.
Canadians are experiencing more than just economic ‘weakness’ with 2.2 million visits to the food bank every month just to survive – the highest usage in history and double what it was in 2019. One-tenth of Torontonians have been forced to rely on food banks, as a quarter of Canadians are now food insecure.
This is the real-world results of a recession: families with empty stomachs, grocery baskets and bank accounts. There’s nothing technical about this recession, yet today’s result shows the Liberals don’t care about the suffering this recession is causing.
We need a real plan that will reverse all the Liberals’ economic policies that have delivered the only recession in the G7. Only Conservatives have put forward solutions that will end inflationary deficits, repeal anti-development laws and scrap red tape to unleash our economy and make Canada affordable at home again.