{"id":631482,"date":"2026-06-10T16:51:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T16:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/631482\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T16:51:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T16:51:14","slug":"canadas-economy-is-weak-but-not-clearly-in-recession-macklem-says-national","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/631482\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada\u2019s economy is weak, but \u2018not clearly in recession,\u2019 Macklem says – National"},"content":{"rendered":"

Governor Tiff Macklem at the Bank of Canada<\/a> said Wednesday that \u201cthe economy is weak, but not clearly in recession<\/a>\u201d after the central bank left interest rates<\/a> unchanged at 2.25 per cent.<\/p>\n

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This is the fifth consecutive rate hold by the Bank of Canada since it last cut borrowing rates in October 2025, and comes after a recent GDP report pointed to a technical recession.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cBased on the data we\u2019ve seen to date, the economy is weak, but it is not clearly in recession,\u201d Macklem said to reporters following the rate hold announcement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at how the economy has evolved over the last year, GDP is roughly flat over the last 12 months. If you look at the labour market, it\u2019s up a little bit over the last 12 months (and) essentially flat over the last six months.\u201d<\/p>\n

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He added: \u201cThere\u2019s been a lot of volatility\u2026but when you look through the bumps, the economy hasn\u2019t really grown in the last year \u2014 but it hasn\u2019t shrunk either.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A recession is typically defined by economists as two back-to-back quarters of negative GDP. In the fourth quarter of 2025, annualized GDP dropped by one per cent, and in the first quarter of 2026, it fell 0.1 per cent.<\/p>\n

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Macklem said this points to clear \u201cweakness\u201d but is not a broad-based decline. This means even though the data points to a technical recession, it is not a situation where the economy is experiencing widespread declines, and there are still key areas of the economy which are either stagnant or slowly starting to improve, he said.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCarney acknowledges \u2018some weakness\u2019 in economy after Canada enters technical recession\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first quarter (of 2026) was just barely negative after the decline in the fourth quarter of last year. If you look across industries, what you see is that in the first quarter, more than half of industries actually grew; expanded on a year-over-year basis. And, as I mentioned, the unemployment rate\u2019s been relatively stable in the 6.5 per cent to seven per cent range.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cSo far, we have not seen a significant broad-based decline in economic activity.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a prepared statement, Macklem highlighted the four-month long conflict in the Middle East pushing up energy prices and disrupting global supply chains.<\/p>\n

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U.S. tariffs was also underscored as a source of \u201celevated\u201d uncertainty as the U.S. administration continues proposing new tariff policies<\/a> that may further impact the Canadian economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cGoverning Council decided to maintain the policy rate at 2.25 per cent,\u201d Macklem said in the statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cEconomic activity in Canada has been weak and uncertainty about U.S. trade policy persists. The conflict in the Middle East is ongoing and oil prices remain elevated.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDebate over whether Canada in recession ensues\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre spoke in Ottawa Wednesday ahead of the Bank of Canada\u2019s announcement.<\/p>\n

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\u201cMy message to Mr. Carney is: you\u2019ve put our country in recession. You\u2019re the only leader in the G20 who\u2019s done that. You can\u2019t blame the rest of the world when the other 19 countries are not in recession,\u201d said Poilievre.<\/p>\n

Although the Iran war has resulted in higher prices at gas pumps, Macklem said, \u201cthere has been limited evidence of broad-based pass-through of higher energy prices to other consumer prices.\u201d<\/p>\n

Macklem also said in the statement that food price inflation \u201cremains high,\u201d but has also moderated.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Recession\u2019 is not the word I would use,\u201d Macklem said to reporters.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would describe the economy as weak. It hasn\u2019t grown really in the last year, there\u2019s excess supply in the economy, there\u2019s slack in the labour market. We\u2019re certainly assessing that closely and, as we indicated, we\u2019re prepared to respond as needed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Governor Tiff Macklem at the Bank of Canada said Wednesday that \u201cthe economy is weak, but not clearly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[29362,84,626,1294,814,13207,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-631482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-bank-of-canada","tag-business","tag-canada","tag-economy","tag-interest-rates","tag-recession","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}