Pierre Poilievre

[The Economy, June 2nd, 2026]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Liberal Prime Minister. Five days after learning that Canada was the only G7 country in recession, the Prime Minister finally decided to answer a question from the media and offer fresh excuses. He says the reason we are in a recession is that immigration is too low and that per capita GDP is actually very good. Per capita GDP has risen by 0.2%.

Is the Prime Minister expecting a parade for that?

[Business of Supply, June 2nd, 2026]

Yes, Mr. Speaker, this is the human cost of the Liberal recession. Canadians cannot afford to eat. In fact, yesterday's report demonstrated that about 25% of Canadians are food-insecure and 25% of food banks at some point last year actually ran out of food. Imagine being that single mother at the checkout, her bank account empties and when she tries to pay with her debit card, it is rejected. She looks at the lineup of people who all just saw her get rejected. She gets into her car humiliated, makes her way to the food bank and it is empty. What does she do now?

Liberals say that this is just a technical recession. I ask them to look that mother in the eye and say that her children's hunger is technical. There is nothing technical about it. There are real human costs for the Liberal government's failures, and if the Prime Minister cared at all about those costs and the people paying them, he would come into the House of Commons and answer a question about it, for once.

[Business of Supply, June 2nd, 2026]

Mr. Speaker, I would love to say that the Liberals have stolen our ideas. They have done so in words, but not in action. They have not put those ideas into practice.

Over the Liberals' 10 years in government, they have increased the cost of government, doubled the national debt, expanded the bureaucracy and public spending, and blocked the development of our natural resources.

In the last election, they promised to turn things around, but nothing has happened. It was nothing more than an illusion.

The Liberal Prime Minister has kept all the anti-development laws in place. He has doubled Justin Trudeau's deficit. He has increased the cost of the bureaucracy. The government now accounts for a larger share of the economy than at any time in the past 30 years. All the anti-development taxes are still in place.

I wish the Liberals would actually implement the ideas they steal from us, not just pay lip service to them.

[Business of Supply, June 2nd, 2026]

Mr. Speaker, the member asked two questions.

Do I have anything positive to say about Canada? I have plenty of positive things to say about Canada, particularly the resilience of the Canadian people who, because of their hardiness, are able to endure the punishment that the Liberal government continues to mete out.

Do I have anything to say about the growth that the government claims the economy is going to lead on? I cannot say anything about that because the government and the economy it leads are not leading the G7 in any metric, other than the most household debt, the most expensive housing and the fastest-increasing food costs. In all of those areas, the economy is leading under the Liberal government and, of course, the first economy to go into a recession. That is not the type of leadership we want for our economy.

[Business of Supply, June 2nd, 2026]

Mr. Speaker, on Friday morning, we learned that Canada is the only G7 country in a recession. This is the topic the member for Edmonton West will address, as I will be sharing my time with him. As he will explain, we are the only G7 country in a recession. For the past five days, we have been waiting for a response from the Prime Minister, a man who has portrayed himself as a brilliant economist and crisis manager. For five days, we have been in crisis due to the revelation that our economy is the only one in decline, for two consecutive quarters. We are the only country in North America that is in a recession.

What does the Prime Minister have to say about this?

First, he said nothing. It took four days before he spoke to reporters. Last night, he approached a reporter. He thought she might ask him a nice question, perhaps give him a compliment. He was very happy. When she got to the microphone, the reporter asked him a question about the recession. Suddenly, he was unable to speak. He turned around and dodged the question. That is quite a response from a great economist.

This morning, we asked him the question: Is Canada in a recession?

He did not answer, other than to say that the economy is weak. Yes, it is weak. It is not the biggest and fastest-growing economy in the G7, as he had promised. It is a weak economy. Then he started making up excuses.

Today, we are going to deal with the excuses that the Prime Minister is coming up with to justify having the only recession in the G7. Today, he says it is purely accidental and that if we take a closer look at the data, we will see that the investment component of GDP is up.

Let us look at the report that Statistics Canada released on May 29, 2026. What does it say about investment?

Allow me to quote a line from that report:

Business capital investment fell 0.7% in the first quarter of 2026, the fifth consecutive quarterly decline.

Investment has been down for five straight quarters. One of the causes of this recession is the dearth of investment. Based on the numbers since this Prime Minister took office, there has been a net decline of $20 billion in investment. In fact, we have the worst investment numbers in the G7, and we can see that the only economic aspects that went up last quarter are government spending and consumption, not investment.

The Liberals' second excuse is that this is just a technical recession.

There is no such thing as a technical recession. Two consecutive quarters of negative growth is, by definition, a recession. The Liberals and their friends say we cannot just look at a single data point, so, okay, let us look at more data points.

In the first three months of this year, 112,000 jobs were lost. The net number of jobs lost since the Prime Minister took office a year ago is 45,000.

Canada's unemployment rate is the second-highest in the G7. It is one-third higher than in the United States. The economy contracted in three of the last four quarters since the Prime Minister came to power. Our economy has bled more than $20 billion in net investment. A total of $109 billion drained out of the Canadian economy, and only $89 billion flowed in. Most of that foreign investment has been used by foreign corporations to take control of Canadian businesses. There has been no real, material investment.

Canada has by far the highest level of household debt in the G7. This may be why Equifax reported that the number of insolvency cases had reached levels not seen since 2019, with a 19% increase over the previous year. In fact, 1.5 million Canadians missed a minimum payment on their debts. The mortgage delinquency rate rose by 32% compared to the previous year.

When we look at the numbers in Canada, it is clear that we are in a recession because of the Liberal policies that have been imposed. No, they cannot use the usual excuse of tariffs or global factors. Every other country in the world is facing these challenges, but no other G7 country except Canada is in a recession. Mexico is part of North America and shares a border with the United States, but it is not in a recession. Canada is the only one in a recession.

That is why we need to reverse the Liberal policies that caused the recession. The recession was caused by taxes, anti-development laws, government red tape and the doubling of the deficit. We, the Conservatives, are proposing to cut taxes on labour, energy, investment and housing construction. To reduce the cost and size of government, we are proposing to cut red tape, consultants, business support, foreign aid, handouts for bogus refugees and so on. The free enterprise system will enable us to grow our economy and cut costs. That is a real solution and that is what we are proposing today.

I rise today to address the news from Friday that Canada is the only G7 country in a recession. Five days have gone by, and the Prime Minister has not bothered to answer a single question in the House of Commons addressing this terrible news. He said he was a man with a plan, a guy who could handle a crisis, and yet for four days, he would not even take media questions on the fact that Canada was the only G7 country in a recession.

Yesterday, while walking out from a speech, a journalist called him over. He had a big smile on his face, expecting that the media was going to again throw rose petals at him. When he arrived and found that the question was about the recession, he said oh, ah, and he turned around and walked away, that being his first response after four days of learning that Canada is in a recession, the only country in the G7 in a recession.

Today, he finally took a few questions from the media but refused to answer whether we were in a recession. He did make a number of excuses. He claimed that it was just that some aspects of GDP shrunk. In reality, he said, investment, is up.

What does Statistics Canada say about that? The report that broke the news of the recession said, “Business capital investment fell 0.7% in the first quarter of 2026, the fifth consecutive quarterly decline.”

It is not true, Mr. Prime Minister, that investment is up. In fact, the only things that were up were government spending and consumption, meaning that Canadians had to spend more just to survive. The things one would want to be up, like the net exports, were down. We have a trade deficit. Investment was also down.

He went on to claim that, in fact, it was just a technical recession. In what sense is it technical? The textbook definition of a recession is two back-to-back quarters of negative growth. That definition is met.

Liberals then say, as the Prime Minister said today, that we cannot focus just on one thing. I agree. Let us focus on the other data points.

In the first three months of the year, 112,000 jobs were lost. Since the Prime Minister took office, on a net basis, there are 45,000 more Canadians unemployed. We have the second-highest unemployment in the G7, a third higher than in the United States. Of the last four quarters under the Prime Minister, the economy has shrunk in three of them. Business investment is down 0.7%. Over $20 billion of net investment has fled since he took office. Equifax reported that insolvency rates have increased to levels not seen since 2009, up 19% year over year, and 1.5 million Canadians have missed a debt payment in the first three months of this year alone, with mortgage delinquency rates up 32% year over year. Canada has the biggest household debt load of any country in the G7. The CEO of the Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto said that one-tenth of Toronto is now eating at a food bank. That is the real cost.

This is not technical. Hunger in the bellies of Canadians who cannot pay their bills is not technical. Canadians need a reversal in the Liberal policies, and that is what we are fighting for today. Let us have a strong, affordable and safe Canada.

[Request for Emergency Debate, June 1st, 2026]

Mr. Speaker, it is the Prime Minister's duty to stand up, look Canadians in the eye, explain how he managed to become the only G7 leader to take his country into a recession and tell us how he is going to reverse the Liberal policies that put us into this mess. We as Conservatives are here to be collaborative and to provide solutions: to repeal the antidevelopment laws that have suppressed our energy sector, to take all taxes off homebuilding so our young people can afford to buy a home and to cut taxes on energy, including the tax on gas for the rest of the year, to save Canadians 25¢ a litre, $20 a fill-up and $1,200 by Christmas.

These are real solutions that we could be using in order to rescue people from the Liberal recession, but it is going to take an emergency debate to wake up the Liberal Prime Minister from his slumber and get him to do his job.

[Request for Emergency Debate, June 1st, 2026]

Mr. Speaker, I am requesting an emergency parliamentary debate in response to the Statistics Canada report published on Friday, which shows that the Liberal Prime Minister is the only leader of a G7 nation steering his country into a recession. We have learned that Canada's economy has contracted over two consecutive quarters. That is the official definition of a recession.

However, that is not all. Canada has lost 112,000 jobs this year, 45,000 of them since this Prime Minister entered office. We have the second-worst unemployment rate in the G7, one-third higher than unemployment in the United States. The number of people missing mortgage payments has increased by a third in one year. That is the highest level in the world. Furthermore, Canada has the highest household debt of any G7 country.

If this were only a result of global factors, Canada would not be the only G7 country and the only North American country in a recession. These are Liberal effects because this is a Liberal recession. It is an emergency for ordinary Canadians. For the single mother who has to return items as she goes to pay at the grocery checkout because she has no more money left, it is an emergency. It is an even bigger emergency if she drives to a food bank that has run out of food for clients. What about the father who has to go home to tell his kids he has lost his job and has to sell the home? It is an emergency for young couples who cannot buy a home and build a family. Those are the human consequences of this Liberal recession.

The Prime Minister has been silent since Friday when this news became public. This is the man who is supposedly a banker, an economic genius, yet he has nothing to say about the fact that he led the country into a recession.

I therefore call on him to be here in the House of Commons so that we can have a genuine debate on how to reverse this Liberal recession.

I am rising today to ask the Speaker to declare an emergency debate on Friday's Statistics Canada report that shows that the Liberal Prime Minister is the only G7 leader to take his country into recession. The agency revealed that Canada's economy has now shrunk for two quarters in a row. That is only true of Canada.

It is not just the one data point, though. The economy has shrunk three of the last four quarters that the Prime Minister has been in power. Investment has dropped five quarters in a row. We have lost 112,000 jobs in the first three months of this year alone, and we have had 45,000 net job losses since the Liberal Prime Minister took office promising to create jobs. We have a one-third increase in mortgage delinquencies, the highest level in 17 years, as Canada's households are, by far, the most indebted in the G7, and three million Canadians will have to renew at higher mortgage rates over the next two years.

We cannot blame global effects when it is only Canada that is in recession among G7 nations, nor can we say that we are in an especially difficult position vis-à-vis the Americans because we are in North America since our friends in Mexico are also not in a recession. It is only this country, under the Prime Minister, that faces this Liberal recession.

One might say the economists should be concerned about the word “recession” and ask if it really is an emergency in the lives of Canadians. For that single mother who has to return items as she goes to pay at the grocery checkout because she has no more money left in her bank account, it is an emergency. It is an even bigger emergency if, later that day, she drives to one of the one in four food banks in Canada that has run out of food. What does she do then? Does she start calling friends and family and asking if they have any surplus food in their fridges? What about the father who has to home tonight to tell his kids he has lost his job and has to sell the home? For him, just like for that mother, this is an emergency.

The Prime Minister could not be bothered to say a single thing about this emergency since he learned of it on Friday morning. He has been in hiding. He refuses to take a single question from the media or in the House of Commons, and today, once again, he is banning the media from asking him questions, expecting they will just cover photo ops of him wandering around a construction site. That is not good enough. This is an emergency in the lives of people who have empty fridges, empty stomachs and empty bank accounts, and they expect the Prime Minister, who promised that he was a great economic genius, to get in here and explain how he managed to be the only leader in the G7 to cause a recession.

[The Economy, June 1st, 2026]

Mr. Speaker, with Canada being the only G7 country in a recession, there are very real human costs. Today those came to light as Food Banks Canada published a report giving the government a failing grade, indicating that one quarter of all Canadians now live in food insecurity. A quarter of food banks have actually run out of food in the last year.

What is a single mother who cannot afford groceries supposed to do when she gets to an empty food bank? How is she supposed to feed her kids?

[The Economy, June 1st, 2026]

Mr. Speaker, it is the Liberal Prime Minister who is running down our economy and then running away from accountability for it. Where is he, anyway? It has been four days since Statistics Canada reported that Canada is the only G7 country in a recession, and the Prime Minister has not answered one question, not in the House, not from the media, not from anyone. This is the guy who said to hire him in a crisis. Well, now he has made a crisis. He has created the only G7 economy that is in a recession.

Instead of running away from accountability, why does the Prime Minister not run in here and do his job?

[The Economy, June 1st, 2026]

Mr. Speaker, Mexico shares a border with the United States and is as integrated with the U.S. as we are and Mexico is not in a recession. In all of North America, only Canada is in a recession.

Not only that, but since this Liberal Prime Minister took office, he has lost 46,000 jobs, 112,000 in the last three months alone. We have the second-highest unemployment rate in the G7, a third higher than the rate in the U.S. The economy has contracted three of the last four quarters. Over $20 billion of net investment has fled the country. There have been five consecutive quarters of investment dropping. Mortgage delinquencies are up a third at a 17‑year high.

Why are we the only country in a recession?