UnPeeled

Shannon Peel | Narrative Strategist | Founder, MarketAPeel* Canada is technically in a recession. Two consecutive quarters of negative annualized GDP growth, minus one percent in Q4 2025 and minus 0.1 percent in Q1 2026. Politicians are arguing about who caused it. Economists are arguing about whether it even qualifies as a real recession. The problem is Canadians Investing outside of Canada The GDP number is a lagging indicator. It tells you what already happened. The number

Since June 2025, Bick's Pickles have been disappearing from Canadian retailers. At Safeway stores in Edmonton, a sign on the shelf reads: "Bick's pickles are currently unavailable as an unfortunate impact of tariffs." Sobeys has delisted the brand entirely. The CEO of Treehouse Foods — the American company that now owns the Bick's brand, confirmed that retailers told him the 25% Canadian counter-tariff makes them "just too expensive, frankly" to stock.

CUSMA, the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, is now heading into its mandatory July 2026 review. This is the question on every Canadian business leader's mind:What happens if talks fall apart? Does CUSMA end? Can Trump pull the plug unilaterally? And what does that mean for Canadian businesses?

The conversation has been swirling through every marketing Slack channel, LinkedIn post, and conference hallway for the past two years: AI is coming for SEO jobs. The tools are writing the content. The algorithms are choosing the keywords. The platforms are generating the reports. What exactly is left for a human being to do?

Trump's tariffs on the BC forestry industry is not the only reason for the crisis, it's not even the main reason mills are closing. The BC forestry industry is under pressure from decades of compounding damage. It's time we understood the larger problem to see if this industry can be saved.

Canadian Businesses to Diversify ExportsThe federal government has done its part. Carney has signed trade agreements, launched export programs, sent trade missions to Asia, signed energy deals with Europe, and opened doors with markets that Canadian businesses have barely glanced. Now it is up to Canadian businesses to walk through them.

, three significant announcements came out of Ontario that barely made a ripple in the doom-and-gloom news cycle, but carry real implications for workers, businesses, and anyone paying attention to where the jobs and contracts will be.

Carney and Trump have signalled that a comprehensive Canada-US trade agreement is unlikely to materialize in time. Trump told reporters outside the White House that Canada "could be one where there's just a tariff, not really a negotiation." Carney, for his part, has said he will only accept a fair deal — and has been clear that no deal is better than a bad one.

the Canadian Business opportunity is there, but it requires you to do the reading, ask the questions, and reach out to the right people. Call the associations. Go for coffee with someone who works in the industry. Talk to your MP about what programs are available.

The quarterly reports are telling us we are living in a partly artificial economy right now. The real signals will become clearer in Q3 and Q4. Until then, the most useful thing you can do is: Know which direction your product or service moves in a tightening versus expanding market. Identify which publicly traded companies match that direction based on their actual financial results. Study what story those companies are telling and where the gaps are.