Message To Poilievre: A Recession? Good

Last month, Canada entered a technical recession. This means that overall spending in the economy dropped two fiscal quarters in a row. The first quarter of 2026 saw GDP shrink by 0.1% on an annualized basis. The tail end of 2025 saw a greater contraction of 1%. In short, we are trending poorly.

As everyone expected, the printing presses were still hot when opposition leader Pierre Poilievre lambasted Prime Minister Carney’s economic failure. Surely, collapsing living standards and a stagnant economy could have been avoided if we had a more competent and responsible government these last 10 years. As Poilievre so often reminds us, the Liberal Party has been the party of decline. A short walk through the core of most any town or city makes this a hard truth to deny. We are not what we were. 

But it is not clear to me that Poilievre could have turned around Canada’s economic fortunes in the 15 months Carney has been in office. Changing capital gains is a longer-term policy, not an investment switch. A slight cut to personal income tax might have helped, but how much and how quickly? What about axing the gas tax? What about immigration? Well, if Poilievre honoured his base on the immigration question, the paper results for the Canadian economy might have been even worse.

One of the driving factors which caused us to enter a technical recession is that Carney delivered on a major campaign issue dear to many Conservative voters: he slashed the number of temporary residents admitted into the country.

From a managerial perspective, one of the primary functions of mass immigration is to conceal weak economic performance and stimulate transaction volume. Greater demand is good for business. More mouths means more money. Not for you, not for me.

The secondary effects of a firehose immigration tap pounds working Canadians – the poorer they are, the harder they are hit. At the top, however, it’s just good business. And no government needs a technical recession in the news!

Immigration was not the only factor, but a higher volume could have helped keep the spreadsheets green. Spreadsheets green while plentiful cheap labour removes structural incentives to innovate and automate. Spreadsheets green while housing and food are increasingly unaffordable, and services and infrastructure worse and crowded. Spreadsheets green, and the sidewalks too on many a main street. The further down this path we go, the more we’ll need to spend on the maintenance of needle exchanges and public toilets. Whether things look plus or minus hunched over Microsoft Excel, the phenomenal experience of finding a crack pipe in a tree would have been shocking in the Canada of the previous century. Now it’s called a walk to work or to the park.

A technical recession is desirable if the alternative would have required Trudeau-like efforts to artificially inflate GDP through high-volume immigration.

A technical recession is desirable if the GDP in question represents service sector scams and superfluous profit squeezing from scalable commodity oligopolies.

We need a productive base, not new customers for Bell and Tim Horton’s.

There is a lot to judge the Liberals for. Under better management, Canada could have been a premier economic power. To get us there moving forward, I want to see a Conservative Party that is more thoughtful about criticism, and that has a clearer vision of how to deliver the country from managerial decline.

The current standards of governance are not meaningful to Conservative voters, and they aren’t meaningful to the Canadian people. You need to promise more than slightly better management of national decline. Saving the country means thinking further than two fiscal quarters. Saving the country requires more than tax cuts and “small government.” A strong Canada is a Canada that makes short-term sacrifices for long-term gains.

The Conservatives have deployed bulldog tactics for several years. They launch at every headline with predictable rhetorical bluster. They make good criticisms of the ruling party. But I fear they will be stuck in perennial opposition so long as they continue as they are.

The Conservatives need to stop being reactionary. They need to make it clear to voters that they intend on deep and serious reforms. Otherwise, why vote for them? Vague gesturing about red tape, the free market, and boutique tax cuts just isn’t going to cut it. The possibility of four to ten years of marginally slower decline is not inspiring.

If they continue with the mild-mannered milquetoast Conservatism of Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole, the Liberals will continue to outflank the Conservatives and implement just enough Conservative policy to torpedo Conservative vote intention. Today’s brand of Conservatism surrenders the future to the Liberal Party. What will the Conservatives achieve if given the reins of power? I am waiting for them to tell me. I don’t think I’m alone.

But I know the Conservatives can be more than the hedge trimmers of Liberal excess. They can be more than occasional gardeners and eventual stewards of a fundamentally Liberal national project. But first, they need a new light towards which to grow. First, we need vision, and the will to make it so. Where is the wrecking ball?

Be bolder. Be braver. Be better. For Canada.