I'm not an economist, thank god, but I think I understand what the Financial Post writer Pamela Heaven is saying here:
Posthaste: Recession, what recession? Canada's economy is doing better than it has in years by this measureSo naturally, Poilievre is in a panic. And I guess he thinks Canadians are stupid and easily bamboozled, doesn't he.
GDP per person is once again on the rise
Canadian economic data made international news Friday as the latest reading of gross domestic product earned mentions from everyone from investing guru Mohamed El-Erian to the Wall Street Journal.
Canada’s GDP doesn’t often attract such attention, but this time a second quarter of contraction raised the red flag of “technical recession.”
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre seized on the data, accusing Prime Minister Mark Carney of being the only G7 leader to send his country’s economy into recession and calling for an emergency debate.
The numbers were certainly a surprise. The 0.1 per cent decline in GDP in the first quarter shocked observers who had been expecting growth closer to 2 per cent. ‘Historically unusual,” is how Nathan Janzen, assistant chief economist at the Royal Bank of Canada, described it.
Luckily, economists say there is more to a recession than just two quarters of negative growth — namely the 3 Ds — depth, duration and dispersion.
This decline is not even close on depth — amounting to just 0.6 per cent annualized over the two quarters, “barely a scratch in GDP terms,” said Robert Kavcic, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets in a note.
In the past three Canadians recessions, outside the pandemic, the average decline at the weakest point was 5.3 per cent.
Nor is weakness widespread across the economy. The trade war has hit manufacturing, trade and real estate hard, but other sectors like finance, resources and health care are growing, said Kavcic.
Though exports are down, domestic demand has been climbing, and consumer spending has continued to rise.
Duration, he concedes, is getting close. The Canadian economy has been soft since the start of the trade war in early 2025, posting three negative quarters out of four.
However, there is one key variable in this equation that should not be overlooked and when viewed through its lens paints a very different picture of Canada’s economy, say economists — population.
Since the federal government cracked down on immigration after the post-pandemic boom, population has actually declined in Canada over the past two quarters.
So while the overall GDP reading is slipping, GDP per person is on the rise, a welcome change from a few years back when the per capita measure was nose-diving....