In the video speech yesterday, Conservative opposition leader Pierre Poilievre brings the receipts damning PM Carney for Canada sliding into economic recession. Transcript below with my bolds and added images.

The Carney Liberal recession

He’s the only leader in the G7 to have plunged his economy into recession. He’s been Prime Minister for four quarters now. The economy has shrunk in three of those quarters.  He’s the only G7 leader who can say that. The economy is smaller today than when Mark Carney became Prime Minister a year ago. He’s the only G7 leader who can say that.

Mark Carney will like to make excuses today, but let me ask him a question. But before I do, I’m going to actually quote back to him something he said to one of you. Mark Carney said to one of the journalists, Rosie, look inside yourself.  Well, I’m going to ask Mark Carney to look inside himself, and I’ll ask him directly.

Mr. Carney, if it really is global factors and tariffs that have given Canada the only recession in the G7, why have France, Italy, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States all avoided a recession? They all have the same tariffs and the same global factors, yet none of them, not one, is in recession. Only Mark Carney has the distinction of leading his country into a recession.

Now we know that there will be a lot of excuses today, but excuses will not put food on the dinner table of the 2.2 million people relying on food banks. Excuses will not get the jobs back for the 120,000 people who’ve lost them, as Canada has the second highest unemployment in the G7. Excuses will not allow a young couple to buy a home, as Mark Carney has given Canada the worst housing costs in the G7.

Excuses will not help the mother who is tossing and turning in bed at night wondering how she will make her mortgage payment, as Mark Carney has given Canada the most indebted households anywhere in the G7. By the way, Mark Carney will claim that this is just technical. There’s nothing technical about having an empty stomach because you can’t afford paying the worst food inflation in the G7.

There’s nothing technical about coming home from work and telling your kids that you no longer have a job and that they’re going to have to sell the house because Canada has the second highest unemployment in the G7. That is not technical. It is real.  This is a full-blown liberal recession. And it’s not just one or two little data points that cause this, my friends. It is one of many data points that we see today.

For example, in the last few weeks alone, we have fact after fact showing that the liberal economy is collapsing. I’m going to quote from Equifax. Insolvency volumes have increased to levels not seen since 2009, up 19% year over year.  Delinquency rates climbed 32% year over year. In the first quarter of this year, insolvency volumes hit a 17-year high, partly due to escalating financial strain on mortgage holders. And one in 1.5 million Canadians missed a minimum debt payment in the first three months of this year alone.

Then there’s the investment numbers, which came out just yesterday. They show that in the first four quarters under this Liberal Prime Minister, Canada saw $1.9 billion of investment flee. That’s $20 billion more than entered our country.  That’s a net $20 billion leaving our country to build pipelines, mines, homes, bridges, technology, and other countries for foreign businesses and foreign workers.

Again, we cannot blame foreign factors for that, because the other countries to which that investment fled are facing the same foreign factors. So no more excuses, please.  We actually need results. Furthermore, we know that the Prime Minister is fond of doing illusions of action, but here is the core reality. After a year in office, what has really changed in our economic policy? Every anti-development law remains in place, C-69, C-48.

He’s increased the industrial carbon tax six times higher than it was when Justin Trudeau was in office. Home building has actually dropped, and in many provinces the GST still applies to that home building. He’s renamed, not eliminated, renamed the consumer carbon tax, and there are 500 economic projects waiting, some of them for years, just to get through the Liberal bureaucracy permitting system.

Now, we know what won’t fix this. Dazzling speeches at the World Economic Forum, clever-sounding corporate buzzwords, signing fake and unenforceable MOUs in grand halls with stately backdrops, none of these things will reduce costs or boost growth. Announcing projects that were approved many years earlier or making pie-in-the-sky promises like he’s going to double electricity production 25 years from now with no details on how, all of these things are illusions.

They give the impression of action, but in reality, all of the policies of Justin Trudeau remain the same, or they have gotten worse. The deficit has doubled, spending is higher, the only spending that has not gone up is capital spending, precisely the opposite of what Mr. Carney promised. The only way out of this Liberal recession is to reverse the policies that caused it in the first place.

And that is why we are calling for the Prime Minister to get back in the House of Commons next week and introduce a bill to reverse all of the economic policies his party has introduced over the last decade. We don’t need more photo ops, more signing ceremonies, more discussion papers. We need to reverse the Liberal policies that have given Canada the only recession anywhere in the G7.

Conservatives have put forward positive plans to unleash our growth, including a real plan to incentivize the Americans to sign on to tariff-free trade, eliminating capital gains tax on reinvestments in Canada, ending the industrial carbon tax, in fact, cutting taxes on work, energy, home building, and investment, making Canada the fastest place anywhere on earth to get a permit, the freest economy in which to trade, work, invest, and get a return.

Let’s restore the promises of this country where anybody who gets out of bed in the morning can find a terrific job, a job that gives them a great paycheck, that buys affordable food and homes, where our young people can afford to start a family, where our parents can afford to give their children the best start, where our seniors retire in peace and tranquility, and where our economy is truly independent, self-reliant, standing on its own two feet.

That is the mission. Now, let’s turn it into action. Thank you very much. Thank you.

We’ll now take questions from reporters. Please identify yourself and your outlet. One question each.

I can start. Yes, hello, Mr. Poilievre.Laurence Martin from Radio-Canada. It’s an article that just came out this morning. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump administration wants vehicles covered by the CIO, so with low or exempt tariffs, to have at least 50% of American content.Is that an acceptable request in your opinion?

No, I have already proposed a positive plan to eliminate all tariffs on cars, which will force manufacturers to produce one car in the United States for each of their customers in the United States, and one in Canada for each of their customers in Canada. That way, we will be able to increase the production of cars in our two countries, massively, to reverse the commercial deficits that both countries have now. So that’s the only way we can eliminate tariffs between Canada and the United States.

Mr. Carney has given up, and he hasn’t done anything. He’s not at the negotiating table when Mexico is there. And because Mr. Carney is absent, now we’re seeing more dangerous threats compared to our automotive sector.  There is no future for our automotive sector without direct and non-tariff access to the United States. That’s why I presented a plan about three months ago to save the automotive sector and to reverse the decline that we’ve seen in Canada for 10 years.

Mr. Carney has done absolutely nothing since then, except make big contradictions. Yesterday, he said that he wants to, and I quote, make America, in his words, great again, after saying that he wanted a break with the United States. So that’s another big failure for Mark Carney, and perhaps that’s one of the reasons why Canada has the only recession among the G7 countries. Yes, well over three months ago, I presented a plan for tariff-free auto trade with the United States, bring back the 1965 auto pact, which would massively increase production in both Canada and the United States, and actually achieve the stated goals of both countries.

Since that time, Mark Carney has been nowhere and done nothing. While the Mexicans are at the negotiating table eating our lunch on auto negotiations, Mark Carney has not shown up for one negotiation so far. The result is that our auto sector is hemorrhaging jobs under his leadership. 

In the last 10 years, we’ve lost half of our auto production,
and now we’re losing even more.

But because Mark Carney has done literally nothing to fight for tariff-free trade on autos over the last decade, we’ve lost even more auto jobs, and one of the facts that Statistics Canada reported that led to us being the only country in the G7 in recession is the decline in the auto sector. Yesterday, Mark Carney gave a baffling, confusing, and contradictory speech in which he simultaneously said we need a rupture with the United States, and that we need to make America, in his words, great again. So, his elbows are up and down so fast, he’s doing a rhetorical chicken dance while we lose our auto sector.

Rahim Ahmed from the National Post. Mr. Paliyev, you said that you’ll be campaigning across Alberta for a united Canada. Can you give us an update on any visits that you have scheduled back home in the next few weeks? And are you open to debating folks like Keith Wilson and some of the other prominent Alberta separatists?

We will be back in my home province of Alberta to campaign for a united country, and our message is that all of Canada needs to wrap its arms around Alberta. Let’s ensure that every Albertan knows that Canada loves Alberta, that Canada is Alberta, Alberta is Canada, we need to have a strong united nation right across this country.

And that will mean a stronger province of Alberta, but getting out of the way and off the backs of our energy sector, getting rid of the gun grab, locking up criminals to bring safety to our streets, allowing young Albertans to start families with affordable homes, decentralizing control in the country so that Albertans have more direct decision-making power within their provincial boundaries, that is a positive, optimistic, unifying vision that I will be presenting to all Albertans in all corners of the province.

Mr. Poliev, the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs is in town today. He said this morning to Anita Anand, the Canadian minister, that if the momentum continues, trade could increase by more than 100% in five years, and that the Chinese market would remain open to Canada, and that it would soon become the largest market in the world. How do you think that will be received in the United States, and what is the risk to Canada?

First of all, Mr. Carney is directly in a conflict of interest. He went to China to receive a loan of $200 million from a bank controlled by the Chinese government a few months before he took office. He still has investments in Brookfield that he wants to expand his business in China. He has already allowed Brookfield to be at the table of discussions and talks by representing Canada. It has never happened that a prime minister sends his company to make talks.

We want a prime minister who defends Canada’s interests and not his company. Obviously, to say that we can replace the United States with China is not realistic when we sell 20 times more to the United States than we sell to China. Perhaps one of the reasons why Canada is the only country in recession among the G7 countries is our bad calculation of Mark Carney, a man who has been wrong on all economic issues for a decade.

He was wrong on the carbon tax, on the plans to keep all oil on the ground, his opposition to pipelines, his support for monetary pressure. He has been wrong on all economic issues for a decade, and we see that he is still wrong on global issues. Do you think China will do anything to make Beijing unhappy? Of course not. He won’t do anything to make Beijing unhappy.

A year after Mark Carney said that China was the single biggest risk to Canada, he claimed that we were going to have a full rupture with the United States in favour of a strategic partnership for a new world order with the dictatorship in Beijing. Of course, Mr. Carney is in a terrible conflict of interest.

He went and got a $200 million loan for his company from a state-backed Chinese bank while he was the economic advisor to Justin Trudeau. That loan is still owed, my understanding is, by Brookfield, which the Prime Minister continues to be invested in. He allowed Brookfield to be at the table for discussions.

Mr. Carney has got to be clear that he should represent Canada’s interests, not his corporation’s interests. Maybe one of the reasons why Canada is the only G7 country in recession right now is because he is miscalculating on trade, just like everything else. He has been wrong on every economic question over the last decade, and Canadians are paying the price.

He was wrong on carbon taxes, wrong on keeping half our oil in the ground, wrong to oppose a pipeline to the Pacific, wrong to support money-printing inflation, and now he is wrong in his trade priorities. We sell 20 times more to the United States than we sell to China. That is just a mathematical fact, and Mark Carney’s Brookfield interests in China will not change that.

We need a Prime Minister who is fighting for our workers in this country. We should have the best economy in the G7, not the worst. In Q3 2025, the economy grew at an annualized rate by 2.6%. We have economists saying that today’s numbers are so nominal that they could be forecasted away and revised away.

Aren’t you jumping the gun a little bit and calling this a full-blown recession? I know that there are a lot of excuses being made for Mark Carney today, and I am not surprised. By the way, which outlet are you with? The Hilltop. Is 2.6% economic growth an excuse, or is that just the numbers? There is no 2.6% economic growth. You are having to go back? How many quarters are you having to go back now? Two quarters. You are having to go back. Let’s get this straight.

There have been four quarters since Mark Carney became Prime Minister. The economy shrunk in three of those four quarters. Canada is the only G7 country for which that is the case. There has now been an entire year of Mark Carney that is recorded in economic data, and the GDP is smaller today than when he took office. That is only true of Canada among G7 countries.

Now there are two back-to-back quarters where the economy shrunk,
which is the literal definition of a recession.

By the way, it is not just that our economy is shrinking quarter after quarter. It is that we have the second highest unemployment in the G7. You think that the 120,000 people that lost their jobs since the beginning of this year call this just a technical recession? No. They call this real job loss. Then you have the delinquency rate that is up 32% year over year at 17-year highs. We have the highest household debt of any country in the G7, the worst housing costs of any country in the G7, and for most of the last year, the worst food price inflation of any country in the G7.

So yes, you are making excuses and trying to hide from the reality that Mark Carney has given Canada the worst economy in the G7. It is time to stop making excuses, not for political reasons. It is time to stop making those excuses because this is people’s lives. Behind these statistics are empty stomachs, empty fridges, and empty bank accounts. Behind these numbers are 120,000 people who have come home to their kids saying, we cannot have you registered for hockey this year. We have to sell our home.  I do not know what we are going to do. That is the reality of Mark Carney’s economy, and it is trying to stop covering it up with illusions.

Good afternoon, Pierre. So, Pierre, on national defence, Pierre. I will get your question, but I just have to get this. On national defence, yesterday, CanSec, the conference, concluded, and both of your former colleagues in Aeronautical and Peter McKay sang praise of the government’s shift of national defence policy under Mark Carney’s leadership. What do you make of the shift of that national defence strategy and procurement specifically? And also, do you believe you are losing ground to Mark Carney in an issue like national defence to the progressive conservative flank of your party?

No. What we have seen is a lot of illusions from Mark Carney, a lot of spending on bureaucracy, on procurement, and on consultants. A lot of big corporations will get very rich. The problem is that the money is not reaching the equipment in the hands of the soldiers. We 100% support more military spending, but we want to turn that spending into better equipment and better results for our soldiers, not more expensive bureaucracy, more confusing procurement, and more profits for multinational defence contractors.

So, Pierre, your final validation is that there is influence of Mark Carney’s leadership into the media.

Who can even ask questions? I think it is very troubling. The question for those who could not hear is that Mr. Carney has decided to protect the minister from Beijing by not allowing media to enter the room and only to release state photography of the meeting. That is how things are done in Beijing, and now Mark Carney is importing those methods here. Even one liberal commentator on CBC, Althea Raj, said that Mark Carney has an authoritarian streak.

I would remind him that he is supposed to work for Canadians, not for Beijing, not for Brookfield and its Chinese investments. He should open up and actually take questions from the media, like I am doing here today. By the way, he should actually show up in the House of Commons and answer questions there. We see that Mark Carney cannot take difficult questions because his illusion shatters under any scrutiny, but that is not how Canada works.

We are a free and open democracy, not an authoritarian state. Yes, I find it very disturbing that Mr. Carney forbids the media to take pictures and ask questions. He is trying to import protocols from the regime in Beijing, here in Canada. It is not democratic. There are certain CBC commentators who have noticed that he has an authoritarian streak, and now he is using it to promote Beijing’s dictatorship. I remind Mr. Carney that we are a democracy in Canada.

We work for the Canadian people and not for Beijing’s leaders. We should be willing to talk and trade with China. It is a brilliant civilization with hard-working, decent people, but we have to do so with our eyes open. This is a dictatorship that Mr. Carney himself acknowledged was the biggest threat to Canada only a year ago. Our interests in Canada are in being sovereign, self-reliant, and standing on our own two feet, ensuring that we have full control over our technology, our economy, and our minerals. Never will we be vulnerable to the aggressive instincts of a foreign dictatorship.

We have not proposed that. We think that the government should focus on reducing the cost of government spending. It should unleash free enterprise so that our small businesses, our workers, and our investors can make Canada the richest and most affordable country anywhere on Earth.

First of all, we should allow the savings that come as a result of AI to be passed on to consumers. They should not be inflated away through more money printing. Second of all, we cannot allow the government to use high-tech companies as a surveillance arm of the state. That is why we are fighting against the changes proposed in C-22.

We are very worried about excessive government power for surveillance and for control of the population. We need to have a free and open society where Canadians can use the tools that AI offers to make their lives affordable, empowered, make their paycheques bigger, and their lives less complicated. At the same time, we need to make sure that the government does not abuse that technology for its own control. Thank you very much.