Ottawa, ON – As Canadian families struggle with the highest food inflation in the G7, unaffordable housing and 1.6 million people out of work, new data from Statistics Canada paints a grim picture of the reality they face.
The most recent real GDP numbers for November confirm that the Prime Minister’s rhetoric doesn’t match reality, showing that real GDP per capita will likely fall for a third year in a row, meaning Canadians will yet again be poorer than the year before. Meanwhile, since Carney became Prime Minister, $58 billion of net investment has fled to the United States.
For some sectors, the story is even worse. Motor vehicles and parts manufacturing was down a whopping 6.4 per cent month-over-month, transportation equipment manufacturing by 3.8 per cent, forestry and logging by 2.8 per cent and food manufacturing by 1.6 per cent over the same period.
Conservatives know that GDP is about more than numbers on a screen. It’s about real people and their jobs, businesses and families. In the auto sector, just last week, GM announced that 500 people will be out of work at their Oshawa plant. This on top of 3,000 at Stellantis and 300 at Paccar.
In the forestry sector, 1,000 Canadians lost their jobs at Groupe Remabec, along with 150 at Western Forest Products, 150 at Ear Falls Mill, 350 at Sinclar Group Forest Products, 100 at 100 Mile House Mill and 375 at Crofton Paper Mill.
In the Steel industry, United Steelworkers reported 200 job losses last March, with another 1,000 Canadians losing their jobs at Algoma Steel and 153 job losses at Arcelor Mittal.
These are only some of the massive job losses we’ve seen across Canada as the unemployment rate rose to almost 7 per cent in the latest Labour Force Survey.
Overall, wholesale trade declined by 2.1 per cent, its largest contraction since April of last year. Taken altogether, it’s a striking indictment of the government’s inability to match their words with actions and get the trade deals needed to protect Canadian jobs.
The Bank of Canada now expects our GDP to rise by just 1.1 per cent in 2026, while in the US it will rise by more than double that at 2.6 per cent, proving that our economic woes are a “made in Canada” problem.
We might not control what our partners do on trade, but years of development-killing Liberal laws – including the no new pipelines law C-69, C-48, the oil tanker ban, the oil and gas cap and the industrial carbon tax – have prevented our economy from truly playing to its strengths.
Conservatives have been working to undo the damage, even voting to pass the government’s Bill C-5, which gave Ottawa the power to truly move at “unimaginable speeds” on major projects. But despite Carney’s promises to move at unimaginable speeds, not a single major nation-building project has been approved, much less started construction.
It was unsurprising that the Liberals voted against our motion last week, calling on the government to adopt the Canadian Sovereignty Act that would have repealed growth-killing laws, broken down internal trade barriers, and taken steps to protect Canadian IP.
Conservatives will continue to push the government to take action and deliver results for hardworking Canadians, including securing the trade deals our workers desperately need. We have the resources and the workforce to make us the most prosperous and affordable country on earth, and we will always fight to bring Canadians the good jobs and strong paycheques that their hard work should earn.