Yes, we are in a recession. The definition is really clear—we've had two consecutive quarters with negative growth. It's a textbook definition that unfortunately fits that.
What's more worrying than the last six months is what has been happening over the past 10 years. We see that we've had very low growth when we look at our GDP per capita. What does this mean? It means that Canadians' standard of living is not going up—or it's going up very slowly, stagnating—whereas some of our other peers in advanced nations are seeing theirs go up. It means that Canadians are unfortunately having a little bit more trouble balancing their budgets at the end of the month, simply because they don't have more funds. They don't have more money to spend on the everyday goods they need.
Just in the last five years, when we adjust for inflation, the growth in GDP per capita, or the economic pie per person, has only been up 3.5%. That is abysmally low. That's why we would like to see this government work to reverse this. Unfortunately, creating a new government fund to try to direct subsidies to specific industries is not the way to do that.