Madam Speaker, it is always an honour and a privilege to be able to rise on behalf of the great people of southwest and west central Saskatchewan. I rise today to talk about the opposition motion that we have put forward, but before I do, I just want to take a few moments here to offer our sincere condolences to the families in Pelican Narrows who were impacted by a shooting that happened up there yesterday. Our thoughts and prayers are with the community and the family of the victim up there. I wanted to start off by acknowledging that.
What are we doing here today? We are talking about a recession. The Prime Minister himself, in an interview with the BBC when he was over in England, said “the technical definition of a technical recession is...two [straight] quarters of flat or negative [GDP] growth”. That is it. It is pretty simple.
What do we have here in Canada? Let us take a look. Real GDP fell 0.1% in Q1, and the quarter before that, it fell roughly 1%. Based on the Prime Minister's own words, that meets the definition of a technical recession, so that is what we have.
The Prime Minister has been in power for a little over a year. He is supposed to be the grandmaster economist who is going to save Canada. He was bold enough to stand at the microphones and say that the United States was on track for a recession, but Canada was not. There might be some impact from what is happening in the States, but it was headed for a recession, and we were not. That is what he said. That was right around the time of the last election, so that was one of the first things he was trying to sell to Canadians.
Okay, so let us look at his track record. When he was over in England, he said that Brexit was going to cause a massive recession. Well, he was wrong. I just talked about what he said about the United States. He was wrong. He said Canada was not going to enter a recession. Guess what. He was wrong, because here we are right now. The Prime Minister's very own definition has been met: two straight quarters of negative or flat growth.