06/07/2026
This Tuesday, after several days of dodging questions about the “technical” recession Canada is in (which is kind of like claiming a woman is “technically” pregnant), Prime Minister Mark Carney finally admitted the country’s economy was a bit patchy. The word he used is “bumpy.”
But Carney had an explanation. The recession wasn’t the culmination of 11 years of failed Liberal policy. No, no, no. It was the result of the caps his government had placed on out-of-control immigration.
The government has let in the equivalent of nine per cent of the population in four years.
“We see some weakness, in part because of clear decisions by the government,” to lower immigration targets, Carney explained.
He has that backwards.
Were it not for the addition of millions of new consumers, Canadians would have noticed the country’s pathetic economic performance three or four years ago and demanded more from the Liberal government to correct the slide.
Annual immigration of upwards of two million permanent residents, foreign students, temporary foreign workers and refugees didn’t drive economic growth, it masked a contraction of the economy.
Of course, as mass migration overcrowded our schools and emergency rooms and drove housing prices sky high, it hid data that shows Canada has been in what is called a “per capita recession” since at least 2022.
Gross domestic product (GDP) per Canadian has fallen every year for four years. Since per capita GDP is one of the most widely used barometers of a country’s standard of living, that means the average Canadian’s personal income has fallen behind inflation since roughly the end of the pandemic.
If you and your family feel you’re falling further and further behind, despite reports of positive growth in the economy, it’s not your imagination. Despite immigration creating the illusion of a growing economy, the average Canadian has seen their lifestyles fall due to immigration driven figures.
The government doesn’t have to bring in sensible, pro-growth policies. It can remain fixated on emissions caps, tanker bans, industrial carbon taxes, EV mandates, net-zero power grids, megaproject cancellations and other radical environmentalist polices that have driven away nearly $1 trillion in investments since the Liberals were re-elected in 2015.
So long as spending by immigrants is artificially papering over the underlying weaknesses in the economy, the government is not going to take the political flak it deserves, nor make the necessary changes to tax and economic policies.
Every new Canadian needs shelter, food and services. When buying what they need, their spending adds to overall GDP, but not necessarily to the country’s overall economic strength.
Take housing as an example: if accommodation for four million new people has to be found in a country of 41 million in as little as four years, of course GDP will rise, but so will rents and housing prices, to the point where now a majority of Canadians under 35 have given up hope of ever owning their own home.
Or look at student visas. The government issued hundreds of thousands of them, not just to university students, but to students studying six-month business certificates at career colleges. Until recently, those students were allowed to work 40 hours a week and obtain two-year extensions to their visas, mostly just by applying for one. Six months study; two-and-a-half years of work.
This scheme is one of the reasons youth unemployment is approaching 15 per cent.
Carney claimed his government has rolled back some of this immigration tide, and it has, but not enough to end our per capita recession.
Permanent resident targets have been reduced from 500,000 a year to 395,000.
Temporary resident caps — temporary workers and foreign students — are now set at five per cent of the country’s population. That’s still a staggering two million a year.
If the Carney government doesn’t want to keep Canada in a recession, technical or otherwise, it has to correct these policies.
