Windsor Chamber weighs in on recession warning, rising unemployment

The Windsor Essex Chamber of Commerce weighed in on a recession warning. CTV Windsor’s Travis Fortnum shares the story.

With new forecasts predicting a mild recession for Canada later this year, Windsor business leaders are keeping a close eye on how things might play out here at home.

Deloitte Canada and the Royal Bank of Canada both released reports this week suggesting the country could avoid the worst-case economic fallout from the current trade tensions with the U.S. — though some short-term pain is still expected.

“We do think the economy really is going to be considerably slower,” said Dawn Desjardins, chief economist at Deloitte Canada.

The Windsor-Essex Chamber of Commerce said that slowdown has already been felt locally, especially since tariff concerns started to dominate headlines earlier this year.

“It does highlight that there is the uncertainty that’s continuing to exist in the Canadian economy,” said Chamber President and CEO Ryan Donally.

“That uncertainty we’ve been feeling in Windsor-Essex probably since late January, early February, when this tariff issue started to rear its ugly head.”

Donally said there have been some layoffs in Windsor’s manufacturing sector, but not as widespread as originally feared.

“One of the key things that has maintained some of the stability here in Windsor-Essex is the fact that products underneath the CUSMA (the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement) relationship between Canada [and the U.S.] have still been able to move freely across the border,” he said.

“That’s been, let’s call it, a bit of a saving grace.”

Unemployment steady — but high

Windsor’s unemployment rate sits at 10.8 per cent — the highest in Canada.

But Donally said even that shows some signs of resilience.

“When I reflected on that, I think it’s actually perhaps a little bit better than I thought it may come in,” he said.

“Recognizing that it is a three-month moving average for unemployment in our region... It encapsulates essentially the months that have been part of this trade tariff war.”

“I don’t want to say it’s a silver lining because it still is near the top in Canada — if not the top — but if we can weather this storm and we can maintain that type of unemployment rate… I think come fall, we’re probably in a much better spot.”

A slower summer — then a bounce-back?

Donally said manufacturers on the Chamber’s trade task force expect a quiet summer but are optimistic for what’s next.

“They did identify that it might be a bit of a slow summer, a bit of a lean summer,” he said.

“But they did expect that fall would perhaps ramp back up.”

He added: “There is this pent-up demand in the market.

“It’s not that Windsor has been necessarily hit harder than all areas — the whole manufacturing sector has really slowed down globally. But cars still need to be built, and cars still need to be purchased.”

Looking ahead, Donally said Windsor’s large-scale projects — including the Gordie Howe International Bridge, the new acute care hospital and the NextStar EV battery plant — could put the region in a strong position for recovery.

“If we do manage to get through this and we don’t hear that R-word... I think it positions this entire economy to do extremely well coming out of it,” he said.