Canada is technically in a recession and the prime minister won’t say the word. Matt Gurney thinks the more important conversation is the one hiding underneath it.

For years, the answer to flat economic productivity was simple: put more people in the country. More people at Tim Hortons, more people at Canadian Tire, more dollars tallied in GDP. It worked as a number. It did not work as an economy. Canadian productivity per working hour has been declining relative to the United States for decades, and the gap keeps widening. Now the population is actually dipping, the tariff pressure is real, and the mask is off.

Gurney’s read on Mark Carney: he knows what the big picture problems are and he’s trying to put the country on a different economic track without touching the social policies that keep his party together. Whether you can draw a clean line between economic and social issues is another question. And it’s been more than a year. The steering wheel might be broken, or the ship just takes this long to turn. Either way, Canadians aren’t asking for a Hail Mary. They want a yard.

Topics: Canada recession 2025, Canadian productivity decline, GDP population growth, Mark Carney economic policy, immigration and GDP Canada

GUEST: Matt Gurney | http://readtheline.ca

Originally aired on2026-06-02