The Canadian economy is in a “vulnerable position,” according to at least one economist, and although the latest GDP data revealed a technical recession by some definitions, not all economists are ready to declare one formally just yet.
Statistics Canada said Friday that GDP in the first quarter of 2026 fell 0.1 per cent on an annualized rate, and follows a revised one per cent annualized decline in the fourth quarter of 2025. A technical recession is most commonly defined as two consecutive quarters with negative economic growth.
On a quarter-over-quarter basis, the agency says growth was essentially unchanged, but small movements in quarterly figures are magnified when converted into annualized rates. Real GDP declined last October and in March, but growth was either flat or positive in the four months in between.
“Don’t get me wrong, the economy has struggled to gain any meaningful traction over the last year … but for now, we wouldn’t necessarily call it a technical recession,” TD Bank economist Marc Ercolao said to The Canadian Press.
He said the decline in real GDP last quarter was still basically zero, and could easily be revised up in future Statistics Canada reports.
Friday’s release came as a surprise to some economists, who were expecting to see a positive result for the quarter.
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“The Canadian economy continued to struggle in the first quarter, as GDP posted another decline,” said Katherine Judge at CIBC Economics in a statement.
“The 0.1 per cent annualized drop was in stark contrast to the consensus for a rebound to 1.5 per cent.”
Judge highlights how there were sizeable drops in business and residential investment as well as government spending. She adds that this was the fifth straight drop in business investment amid uncertainty brought on by trade war and U.S. tariffs.
“First-quarter growth was a disappointment. We’re certainly in a vulnerable position, with some of the key engines of growth beginning to sputter,” said principle economist Andrew DiCapua of the Business Data Lab and Canadian Chamber of Commerce in a statement.
“April shows some hope, but this does not set the economy up for the growth we had expected this year.”
The statement added: “The outlook remains choppy.”
Statistics Canada mainly blames higher imports of gold and a weak month for Canada’s resource extraction industries in March for dragging down recent economic activity.
Exports fell 0.1 per cent overall in the first three months of the year, even as Canada’s oil sector increased shipments of crude oil products and natural gas. Statistics Canada says declines in exports of passenger vehicles and lights trucks offset most of those gains as the sector continues to get hit by U.S. tariffs.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is blaming Prime Minister Mark Carney’s policies for Canada entering recession territory.
“The only way out of this Liberal recession is to reverse the policies that caused it in the first place,” he said Friday in the House of Commons.
“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.”
Friday’s release comes one day after the Bank of Canada said the economy is facing a “volatile” global environment and is vulnerable to shocks as households and businesses continue to struggle.
Bank of Montreal’s chief economist Doug Porter said in a note to clients that there was “no sense sugar-coating this sour result, as the economy has clearly been struggling to grow since the start of the trade war.”
“While there will be plenty of debate over whether this constitutes a recession (we would say ‘no, not really’), there is little debate that the economy has struggled to make any headway over the past year amid the ongoing trade conflict,” Porter said.
The agency’s early estimates for real GDP in April call for a sharp rebound to 0.4 per cent growth in the month as the mining, quarrying and oil and gas sectors returned to growth.
Friday’s data further cemented economists like Porter’s predictions that the Bank of Canada will likely keep interest rates where they are for the foreseeable future.
Porter said the soft first-quarter GDP figures should “really throw a wet blanket” over rate-hike talk in financial markets, “as the economy is in no condition to deal with higher rates.”
– With files from The Canadian Press
China will never buy 75% of our exports time to sit down and work out a deal with the United States of America!
Hey, what you folks complaining about? Our good friends in the Liberal party have got the good ship SS Canada sinking on a nice level manner. Why are they sitting in the lifeboat you ask? Why to make more room on the ship. Heh, heh, heh
One night of drinking and fornicating at Fidel Castro’s residence and nine months later out drops the spawn of depravity that some 45 years later would bring a great nation to its demise.
Repent !!!! Heathen Trudeau.
The Libral know that the only way to fix this is to borrow more money and spend spend. Keep the program’s for that 30% of the people out there. The rest can just keep paying for it. Remember, vote Liberal/NDP folks
Global, take you censorship model and shove it
Carney says “Canada is projected to have the second-fastest growth in the G7 this year and next.”
Problem is with his GDP calculations he adds in the Canada Pension Plan funds. You can’t do that. The CPP is a pension funded by citizen “contributions” it is not government money. That is one of the reasons that the UCP want an Alberta Pension Fund, so the Carney Liberals can’t touch it.
Trudeau has no idea of the value of money.He grew up in a wealthy famous family so the only real struggle he has ever faced was breaking free from his mother’s breastfeeding cycle once he became old enough to legally drink.alcohol.
Trudeau was more concerned about pronouns and extreme gender ideology. He admitted he didn’t think about inflation or the economy. It was Sunny Ways!
I agree with every Liberal here for the fact that we all know it’s Trump, Pee Pee,and Harpers fault.
I got my Elbows Up fighting the fascists and even though my arms are really tired,the string over my head that’s tied to my elbows to keep them up is holding strong.
Massive fail by Carney. Mr. Elbows Up is a total flame out.
Grunt ‘axe the tax’ grunt.
the picture attached to the story is an oil pump jack lol the only business that majes any money. its a slow grind to complete poverty. its part of the plan stealth communism noone in their right mind would vote for this so they bring it in slow and Masquerade as if its accidentally happening instead of by design. gooo kenny
We’ve been in recession for at least two years so don’t call it “technical”. It’s real. And it’s here to stay as long as we have incompetent MOU-loving elbows up dicks in power who’d rather see us gobbled up by China than make nice with US.
No other G7 country is in a technical recession but hey it isn’t the Liberals fault who have been the Govt since 2015.
Finally they have said the recession word something that Canadians have known for a while. Canada is in a recession there is nothing technical about it.
Newsflash: Economists like consistency and clear language. Everything is “technical”.
We are in a recession folks.
Put as much lipstick on the pig as you want, still won’t make her the prom queen. Lieberals have a MAGA like following that’s for sure which explains why we are getting worse each day
I love the downplay. The only G7 country. Liberals are too busy being offended to negotiate.
Some people below are of course blaming Trump. Look at the financials people, Canada has been going down hill for the last decade.
Canada with all its natural resources in a recession yet there are a few Albertans that still want Alberta to remain in the clown show called Canada.
Recession the last fifteen years.
your country has never had an economy for five decades, only Ont and Alb maybe the rest don’t have industry relying on environmental legislation has eventually proven detrimental
Liberals will state that every other country is worse off. Canada has been run into the ground by Trudeau and now Carney.
And that’s with Carney cooking the books. Imagine how bad it really is.
Canada is the only G7 country now in a recession thanks to Carney. Just as the UK had higher inflation than the rest of the EU when Carney’s policies were implemented as Bank of England head. Again it oroves that he has no clue.
Our economy sucked way before the trade war. This government has strangled our resource industry and made has made investments totally impossible. We are simply committing economic suicide. But hey we voted for this.
This is the result you get when you vote in a Drama Teacher / Part Time Snowboarder as PM for a decade.
Economy stalls? Recession in q1?
No!
Not like it’s been in FULL recession and borderline depression since 2020 when the prices of things started artificially going up and people’s jobs and livelihoods were wiped out with forced knockdowns.
Government and media are totally out of touch.
Look no farther than south of the Canadian border for this downturn! And Trump’s “Israel First” platform!
@bwana
This slide started before those events Now what?
Put the blame squarely where it deserves! Israel and the USA’s idiot war on Iran
Feels like it’s been closer to 11 years.
Wokeism and Greeen fantasies have hurt the Canadian economy.
See how real news is reported. Bad and good, despite what rightnuts say about MSN. They are accountable, unlike Fox or Larry’s patriot YouTube where lies are reported daily.
Thank god we have a banker who advised TRUDEAU and is now the Prime Minister
So Mr. Economic wizard Carney has been PM since March 2025. Now Canada has slipped into a technical recession. He has been a total failure so far.
@john below The UK peaked at 11% when Carney was in charge of the Bank of England and his monitory policies kept it higher than the EU which was at 7% at that time. Now we are stuck with that dud.
Elbows Up Canadians with rationalize by saying but hey it is worse everywhere else, but with no data to back that claim.
This is a “Technical Recession” only because the Trudeau Liberals changed what a recession means. Yet more proof that the Liberals under Carney are no different than the Liberals under Trudeau … Terrible managers of our economy.
Sad day when L I b t a r d s like John below can’t admit just for once that the Liberals failed policies and incompetence are making our once prosperous country into everyone’s poor relative.
@John. “But since it was happening globally”.
Perhaps you should compare Canadas real GDP per capita against other advanced economies the last few years. USA growth was at least 1X – 2X higher and yes Liberal policies from the last decade have been detrimental to economic growth. So yes they did have a hand in it. Blaming everything on external factors in erroneous.
Intelligence? Maybe read your post – doesn’t sound like you have a solid grasp of the language.
If a big fool can be elected three times in a row, how stupid must Canadian voters be?Such a stupid result is entirely caused by the voters themselves.Canadian voters, if they have the intelligence of American voters, Canada has long become a truly developed country.For 200 dollars, he had no judgment at all and became mentally handicapped.The quality of Canadian parliamentarians is really not as good as that of the deputies to the National People’s Congress.Westminster politics should be thrown into the garbage dump.It is good for nothing except democratic cheating.The greatest flaw of Canadian politics is that even when one knows they are wrong, they are reluctant to correct it.Stepping into the Third World is just around the corner.
Wow, so everyone just believes that it must be the liberals fault, and that there are no external factors? Inflation must be the liberals fault – but since it was happening globally I guess liberals here are way more powerful than I thought? This fantasy thinking is why PP and the cons didn’t win. Canada’s inflation peaked around 8% in 2022. The U.S. peaked around 9%. The U.K. exceeded 11%. Several European countries saw double-digit inflation. Countries such as Argentina and Turkey experienced far higher rates due to domestic economic problems. So there are other factors beyond Carney and liberals that are negatively impacting Canada (e.g. US). But you go ahead and continue your thinking – that will keep you out of power.
2015-2026 My elbows are up things just keep getting waaayy better . I can’t wait for my gender reassignment and MAID.
Well this is the least shocking news we’ve had in a while.
Canada is expected to have one of the worst performing advanced economies in the OECD for at least the next decade or longer. We can thank the horrible policies of Trudeau and Carney. Carney was Trudeau’s economic advisor from 2020 – 2025
Whaaaat?… yesterday in NYC (home of the Carney family and his Brookfield gang that he moved there to avoid Canadian taxes), Carney shouted from the rooftops that Canada has the best economy in the G7! Uh oh…then today:
“Real GDP has now declined for two consecutive quarters – meeting the definition of a technical recession”.
Thank you for your donation!
Carneys plan coming to fruition then,
Soon their will be 3 million using food banks 2 million without a home living in tents , youth unemployment will be at
75 % and yet the Elbows up crowd with still support and defend the Liberals just like Global do.
Don’t worry guys our leader ans savior mark carney will save us!!!!
Jk lol no he wont , he wants us to be desperate and broke,
This country sucks just as much as conservatives
Canada has been in a recession for years
Unfortunately the bought media would rather collect their cheque than report news that is damaging to the LPC
You “have their back” after all
Elbows up!
Canada has been in a recession for a decade! A recession started by Trudeau and being made worse by Carney! F*scism needs to be stomped out. Media needs to be burned out! Those excepting bribes need to be jailed for treason! Carney needs to be thrown out of this country!
Don’t worry the media will blame trump or Iran for a decade of markin Carneau anti canada policy. Enjoy poverty cucknucks you voted for it since 2015
So some can say it and others can’t. Its call tareting Global! You are targeting me and thats illegal! ITS CALLED FREEDOM OF SPEECH YOU AZZHOLES! I will have my say even if you censor me! GO TO H*LL GLOBAL!
A “technical recession”…..
Wow, way to carry water for the government, Global… don’t worry Liberals will keep up with the payments, they can’t do it without paid media.
Heck yea! Elbows up… or is it Canada Makes America Great Again!?
Either way Lord Carney has made everything so much better!….