{"id":514952,"date":"2026-06-02T16:14:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T16:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/514952\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T16:14:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T16:14:16","slug":"first-reading-is-the-technical-recession-recession-just-a-technicality-technically","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/514952\/","title":{"rendered":"FIRST READING: Is the technical recession recession just a technicality, technically?"},"content":{"rendered":"

First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post\u2019s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.<\/a><\/p>\n

TOP STORY<\/p>\n

On Monday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre rejected reports that Canada was in \u201ctechnical recession,\u201d saying that the country\u2019s economic malaise was not a \u201ctechnicality.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c(Prime Minister Mark) Carney says we\u2019re not in a real recession, as he sent out his Liberal commentators and economists to say it\u2019s just a technicality,\u201d said Poilievre at a press conference announcing that Canada was in the grip of a \u201cfull-blown Carney Recession.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Friday, Statistics Canada announced that GDP had gone down in the first quarter of 2026. This indeed marks Canada\u2019s official entry into the generally accepted definition of \u201crecession,\u201d but only by one of the smallest possible margins in Canadian economic history.<\/p>\n

Recessions are generally \u201ccalled\u201d after two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. In other words, a country\u2019s economy has shrunk for at least six months.<\/p>\n

In the final quarter of 2025, the Canadian economy shrunk by one per cent. And then, in the first quarter of 2026, it contracted again by the razor thin margin of 0.1 per cent.<\/p>\n

In December 2025, Canadian GDP was pegged at $2,339,770,000,000 in 2017 dollars. At the end of March, it came in at $2,339,730,000,000 in 2017 dollars. A difference of about $400 million is what delivered the 0.1 per cent decline, and thus tipped Canada into recession.<\/p>\n

Robert Kavcic, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note to investors that the decline in the Canadian economy seen over the last six months is \u201cbarely a scratch in GDP terms.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 0.1 per cent decline in the first quarter of 2026 is such a tight margin that it\u2019s entirely possible that if the end of March had come a few days later or earlier, the stats would not have shown a recession at all.<\/p>\n

In February, the Canadian economy had actually been growing; GDP grew by an average of about $150 million per day. But in March, all these gains were reversed by an average daily GDP decline of about $113 million.<\/p>\n

A May 29 note by RBC economist Nathan Janzen, for instance, suggested that the 0.1 per cent decline may already be gone. Although Janzen warned that estimates are \u201chighly revision prone,\u201d the early GDP estimates for April were showing a 0.4 per cent increase, driven in part by high oil prices.<\/p>\n

The Conservatives\u2019 point, however, is that Canada\u2019s entry into recession is only the latest indicator of ill health for an economy that was supposed to be running at full speed.<\/p>\n

Poilievre noted that insolvencies are currently at highs not seen since 2009, Canadian household debt remains the highest in the G7, and unemployment is currently the second worst in the G7.<\/p>\n

The latest Statistics Canada figures show unemployment at 6.9 per cent, slightly worse than the 6.8 per cent Canada was posting when Carney was first sworn in as prime minister in March 2025.<\/p>\n

Canada is also the only developed country whose last two quarters have been defined by contraction, however slight.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy is it that only Canada, after a year of Mark Carney, is in a recession today?\u201d said Poilievre on Monday.<\/p>\n

The term \u201ctechnical recession\u201d has been used among financial circles for at least the last 100 years. As early as 1917, a report in the Vancouver Sun noted that the auto sector was experiencing \u201ctechnical recessions\u201d as a result of U.S. entry into the First World War.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s only been within the last few decades that \u201ctechnical recession\u201d has entered heavy usage within the Canadian political lexicon as politicians began litigating economic contractions based on fractions of a per cent.<\/p>\n

The first recorded mention of \u201ctechnical recession\u201d in the House of Commons was in 1990 by Geoff Wilson, minister of finance under then prime minister Brian Mulroney. When the Liberal opposition accused Wilson of what he called the \u201cr-word,\u201d Wilson replied, \u201cIf there is that decline in output in the current quarter then we would have a technical recession.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the midst of the 2008 Great Recession, then prime minister Stephen Harper used the term \u201ctechnical recession\u201d to describe Canada\u2019s relatively mild experience of the downturn.<\/p>\n

Harper\u2019s final months in office would come to be characterized by two consecutive quarters of decline driven in part by plummeting oil prices, leading to years of Liberal claims that they took power amidst a \u201ctechnical recession.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we took office in 2015, the Canadian economy was sluggish, and Canada was in a technical recession,\u201d Liberal MP Jo\u00ebl Lightbound said in one typical 2019 statement to the House of Commons.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

IN OTHER NEWS\"<\/p>\n

When conservative parties hold a leadership race, they typically don\u2019t select the most uncompromising candidate. But that\u2019s just what happened in the B.C. Conservative race with the victory of Kerry-Lynne Findlay. In a race defined by once-verboten pledges to roll back Indigenous influence over resource decisions or challenge gender ideology in schools, among others, the 71-year-old former Conservative MP was consistently the most rigid on all of them.<\/p>\n

<\/dt>\n

U.S.-Canada relations under the premiership of Mark Carney could be described as a bit of a roller coaster.<\/p>\n

Carney will praise U.S. president Donald Trump to his face<\/a> as a \u201ctransformative\u201d leader \u201csecuring the world,\u201d and then deliver an entire speech in Switzerland about how American hegemony is dead.<\/p>\n

He\u2019ll describe Canada\u2019s close economic and cultural ties to the U.S. as a \u201cweakness that must be corrected,\u201d all while parking most of his assets<\/a> (and two of his children) in the United States.<\/p>\n

Of late, Carney appears to be on a pro-U.S. arc of this coaster ride. In a speech last week to the Economic Club of New York, Carney declared<\/a> that \u201cCanada strong will help make America great again.\u201d<\/p>\n

The speech ended up being one of Carney\u2019s very few actions to garner praise from Pete Hoekstra, the Trump administration\u2019s vocal and somewhat dyspeptic<\/a> ambassador in Ottawa.<\/p>\n

\u201cPM Carney said something worth repeating today: \u2018A Canada strong will help make America great again.\u2019 I think a lot of Americans can get behind that kind of positive message,\u201d Hoekstra wrote in a social media post.<\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

One more detail from the B.C. Conservative leadership race. This image from Polymarket, the website that allows betting on political outcomes, was captured by economist Bryan Breguet just before results were allowed. The implication would seem to be that somebody was leaked the early results, and used that information to place a few bets. Incidents like these may be relevant information as Polymarket is increasingly used as a gauge of democratic sentiments.<\/p>\n

<\/dt>\n

First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post\u2019s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post\u2019s own Tristin Hopper. To get an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[174],"tags":[79,995,15853,179,18,223107,93810,19,17,223106,97194,4475],"class_list":["post-514952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-canada","tag-carney","tag-economy","tag-eire","tag-geoff-wilson","tag-house-of-commons","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-minister-mark","tag-pierre-poilievre","tag-statistics-canada"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116681407140760542","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}