Episode Details

Every failure in today's show has a price tag and Canadians are the ones paying it. The per capita recession nobody told them about. The infant formula plant their tax dollars built that ships 85% of its product to China. The groceries benefit that is just a renamed tax credit. Development charges averaging $195,300 per new home in Toronto.

And a national AI strategy unveiled the same week the government is pushing surveillance legislation that is driving tech companies out of the country. The policy failures are not abstract. They show up in the grocery bill, the mortgage payment and the paycheque.

Today on The Really Big Show:

►An RBC economist confirms Canadians were already living through per capita recession conditions from 2022 to 2024, with immigration-driven population growth masking declining living standards in the headline GDP numbers

►Statistics Canada reports Canada's labour productivity fell for a 2nd consecutive quarter in early 2026, extending a years-long decline economists call the country's most fundamental and persistent economic weakness

►Carney returned to Question Period after a week's absence and repeatedly wished Poilievre a happy birthday rather than answering whether Canada is in a recession, while his own Privy Council research shows cabinet anticipated the downturn months ago

►Canada Royal Milk, owned by Chinese dairy giant Feihe, built Canada's largest infant formula facility in Kingston with at least $24 million in taxpayer subsidies, with planning documents projecting 85% of production exported to China, as Canadian parents face periodic formula shortages and infant formula prices have risen more than 70% in 5 years

►3 Chinese state-owned companies maintain significant oil sands holdings, raising questions about why foreign state-owned enterprises benefit from the same fast-track approvals being denied to Canadian-owned resource developers, as Canada's January 2026 economic roadmap with Beijing explicitly welcomes Chinese state investment in Canadian energy

►Heritage Minister Marc Miller suspended the CRTC's 15% streaming levy 48 hours after voting to sustain it, admitting U.S. trade pressure drove the reversal, in the 2nd time cabinet has backed down from a digital tax after Trump threatened retaliation

►Carney announced the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit as a new affordability measure, but the CRA confirms it is simply the existing GST/HST credit renamed and increased by 25%, with identical eligibility rules, payment structure and income-tested formula

►Building Trades of Alberta Executive Director Terry Parker testified that temporary foreign workers and undocumented immigrants are swapping identities, forging Red Seal certifications and being paid in cash on government-funded construction projects, undercutting 60,000 unionized skilled trades workers

►A Liberal MP told the Toronto Star that Carney "yells" and "punches down at caucus all the time," with the prime minister reportedly telling MPs he does not want to hear their concerns but only their solutions

►Leger poll finds 66% of Canadians support expanding Alberta's oil and gas industry, including 58% of Quebecers, 76% of Liberal voters and 60% of British Columbians

►Carney unveils Canada's national AI strategy targeting 90,000 AI-related jobs and free literacy training for 1 million post-secondary students by 2031, as Canada simultaneously pushes Bill C-22 surveillance legislation that major tech companies say would drive them out of the country

►Conservative MP Dean Allison says more than 30 countries have launched comprehensive COVID-19 inquiries while Canada has conducted no equivalent national review, as Health Canada has sealed internal reports on vaccine and drug injuries for 15 years<