{"id":709473,"date":"2026-06-02T02:30:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T02:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/709473\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T02:30:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T02:30:16","slug":"are-we-in-a-recession-be-careful-with-indicators-says-bank-of-canada-national","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/709473\/","title":{"rendered":"Are we in a recession? \u2018Be careful\u2019 with indicators, says Bank of Canada – National"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even though the most recent GDP reports<\/a>\u00a0show a technical recession<\/a>, the Bank of Canada<\/a> and several economists aren\u2019t ready to declare one formally just yet.<\/p>\n

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Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn Rogers at the central bank spoke at a House of Commons committee on Monday, and answered questions about Canada\u2019s economy following Friday\u2019s GDP report.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we need to be careful not to put too much weight in any one indicator,\u201d\u00a0she said.<\/p>\n

Many economists have also challenged the recession label, arguing the recent slump doesn\u2019t have the depth or breadth to meet that bar.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile there will be plenty of debate over whether this constitutes a recession (we would say \u2018no, not really\u2019), there is little debate that the economy has struggled to make any headway over the past year amid the ongoing trade conflict,\u201d said chief economist Doug Porter at the Bank of Montreal in a note to clients sent on Friday.<\/p>\n

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Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre spoke in front of the House of Commons on Monday and said Canadians need answers about why Canada has the only shrinking economy in the G7.<\/p>\n

Carney was scheduled to tour a construction site in Ottawa Monday and was not present for question period in the House of Commons.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou would expect him to be there, to be accountable, to show his incredible economic brilliance, but he\u2019s not showing up for question period,\u201d Poilievre said.<\/p>\n

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Poilievre then addressed Mr. Carney in saying, \u201cBe accountable for your recession.\u201d<\/p>\n

Poilievre also dismissed assessments pushing back on the recession label as coming from \u201cLiberal commentators and economists.\u201d<\/p>\n

A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth, measured by the GDP.<\/p>\n

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The annualized rate of GDP in the final three months of 2025 was a drop of one per cent, and in the first quarter of 2026, it was down by 0.1 per cent.<\/p>\n

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But GDP data is one of multiple indicators and ways to analyze economic health, and Rogers says there is much more that needs to be taken into account.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo quarters of annualized [quarterly] contraction in GDP does meet one definition of a recession, but simply the fact that you have to put the term \u2018technical\u2019 in front of it sort of tells you that you really need to look past that one indicator,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou need to look at employment, you need to look at some of the more leading indicators.\u201d<\/p>\n

This means that a recession can be measured by the technical definition seen in GDP reports, but others say it should take into account the job market and consumer price movements and inflation, as well as import and export data and reports on business investment among others.<\/p>\n

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Canada\u2019s unemployment rate was measured at 6.9 per cent in the month of April<\/a>, which was up 0.2 per cent from the month prior, and 18,000 jobs were also lost. This means the job market, seemingly, continues to struggle.<\/p>\n

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Inflation in April spiked to 2.8 per cent<\/a>, which Statistics Canada says was largely due to higher gas prices.<\/p>\n

In addition, core inflation, which strips away volatile food and energy prices, actually declined from 2.2 per cent in March to two per cent in April. The Bank of Canada\u2019s target range for inflation is between one and three per cent.<\/p>\n

Scotiabank chief economist Derek Holt noted that harsh winter weather and tariff-induced trade swings were spurring volatility in the recent economic data. Imports of gold were also sharply higher in the first quarter and dragged GDP lower.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt would be irresponsible to make a recession call on the basis of surging gold imports that are idiosyncratic in nature versus reflective of underlying activity in the economy,\u201d Holt said.<\/p>\n

Rogers said another indicator that a \u201crecession\u201d label may be premature is the outlook for the next GDP report.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know, for example, that the flash data for April, which is the early warning GDP for April, it tell us there\u2019s been a bit of a rebound.\u201d<\/p>\n

Economists widely expect the Bank of Canada will keep interest rates on hold for the foreseeable future, but if the economy continues to show signs it is struggling, then further cuts could be the result.<\/p>\n

\u2013with files from The Canadian Press.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even though the most recent GDP reports\u00a0show a technical recession, the Bank of Canada and several economists aren\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":709474,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,44588,99,2065,6016,164,17119,4846],"class_list":["post-709473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bank-of-canada","tag-business","tag-canada","tag-consumer","tag-economy","tag-gdp","tag-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}