Kanadas Wirtschaft schrumpft im vierten Quartal um 0,6 %

Headline is lying by omission. Its 0.6% annualized, the actual change in Q4 was a decrease of 0.15%, compared to the 0 change that had been anticipated.

Really should use the CBC for these stories, no paywall:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canada-gdp-dec-2025-9.7108015

More on the year from the better CBC article:

> Statistics Canada revised the annualized third quarter growth downward to 2.4 per cent, from 2.6 per cent previously, and upwardly revised second quarter contraction to 0.9 per cent, from 1.8 per cent, on an annualized basis.

This is of course in part a consequence of our decision to dramatically shrink the size of our workforce. You don’t shed millions of workers without losing some overall GDP.

In fairness, a lot of those temporary worker programs were terribly designed. I would have preferred a massive overhaul of how we use temporary worker programs, but what’s done is done. Now we are going to have to find a new equilibrium as the burden of supporting record numbers of dependent seniors falls now on a much diminished number or workers.

Our economy over the last 10-15 years was primarily built on real estate and population growth.

Real estate is ultimately a terrible basis for an economy. For one, it’s value comes from its scarcity. Number two, it is a non-productive asset that doesn’t create or build anything. Number three, limiting your real estate has rippling effects on your economy when your workers are unable to be mobile. An immobile work force is not dynamic.

This is why Canada’s productivity has decreased.

We were not building anything of value. We were not researching or developing. We were dependent on trade with Americans and got comfy and lazy.

Mark Carney is making significant shifts in our economy. Considering the trade war going on, this is actually impressive. The zero population growth is sending the signal that we are no longer a real estate dependent economy. The massive investments in the military industrial sector will lead to benefits to wider society as well, creating aggregate demand for research intensive industries to spring up. And these industries have spillover impact on civilian sectors.

The only recommendation I would give is to consider cutting old age security. This benefit does not make much sense considering baby-boomers are by and large, the wealthiest people in Canada. The intention of old age security was to help retired farmers and other folk without pension plans 50+ years ago. It’s out of place with the people currently collecting it.