Quebec EXPLODES As 43,000 Jobs VANISHED In ONE MONTH — Carney UNDER FIRE!

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]On Monday, April 27th, in a small town called Saint-Croix on the South Bank of the Saint Lawrence, the Laflamme family walked into the South Shore furniture plant and told 126 workers that 86 years of Quebec manufacturing was ending that afternoon. Your country lost one of its last major furniture makers in a single conversation. The Saint-Croix factory and the Coaticook plant were both closing for good. Sales had dropped 77% in 3 years. American tariffs on one side, dumping from Asia on the other, and a federal government that had been promising a rescue for over a year.

[00:00:34]Saint-Croix is a town of 2,700 people.

[00:00:37]South Shore was one of two major employers. And there's one number tucked inside Ottawa's own response package, the one Carney announced with a press conference and a smile, that once you line it up against what just happened in Quebec, tells you everything about whether anyone in this country knew the scale of what was coming. The people who'll feel this first are already living on a paycheck that doesn't stretch the way it used to. And 3 days after Saint-Croix got the news, a second 75-year-old Quebec furniture maker quietly told its workers the lights were going off, too. Bestar in Lac-Mégantic, 120 workers, same week, same province, same reasons. Bestar's parent company, E-Solutions Furniture Group, announced it can no longer make interest payments to its lenders and was entering bankruptcy proceedings. Daniel Cloutier, the Quebec director of Unifor, said out loud what every plant manager in Quebec was already thinking. "When companies shut down one after another," he said, "it isn't a coincidence." And South Shore wasn't even the only Quebec name to go down that week. Because this isn't a story about two furniture plants. Pull the camera back, and the pattern has been documented for over a year. Dorval ceased all North American manufacturing in June 2025. Prepac terminated more than 170 Canadian jobs and shifted production to North Carolina, which then shut down, too. Groupe Remabec, the largest private forestry company in Quebec suspended all forestry operations and laid off 1,000 workers in a single afternoon. That's the backdrop. Now look at what Statistics Canada published on May 8th. Quebec lost 43,300 jobs in April. Manufacturing alone shed 11,100, the second straight monthly decline.

[00:02:16]Construction dropped 8,800 jobs, the fourth straight months of losses.

[00:02:20]Wholesale and retail trade lost another 14,200.

[00:02:24]The Mauricie region, which depends on wood and metal manufacturing, lost 7.8% of its total employment over the past year. That's not a slowdown. That's an industrial base coming apart on a deadline. Lana Payne, the national president of Unifor, called the closures the latest tragic casualty of Trump's sustained attack on Canada's industrial base. And while South Shore was emptying out and Bestar was filing for bankruptcy, Ottawa was preparing a number of its own. We'll get there. But if you think two furniture plants shutting down in one province in one week is the worst of it, wait until you see what the federal numbers actually say.

[00:02:58]Remember the number I told you about, the one tucked inside Carney's own response package? Here's what it says, and here's why every Quebec worker should be furious. Last week, the federal government rolled out something called the workforce tariff response.

[00:03:12]$570 million over three years, run through the labor market development agreements, designed, and this is the line you have to read carefully, to support up to 66,000 workers in vulnerable industries.

[00:03:25]Now, 66,000 sounds big. It's a real number. It's the kind of number that makes a headline. It's the kind of number a prime minister puts on a press release and walks away from. Except Quebec, one province out of 10, has already lost 87,000 jobs in the first four months of this year alone. That's not a typo. That's not a forecast.

[00:03:45]That's already on the books at Statistics Canada and confirmed by Desjardins in a May 8th economic report.

[00:03:52]One province, four months, 87,000 jobs.

[00:03:56]The federal response was built for 66,000 nationwide. Quebec was already past that number before Carney finished the press conference. And it gets worse because if you look only at full-time jobs, the kind that pay mortgages and dental and retirement, Quebec is down 110,100 since December 2025.

[00:04:15]That's -2.9% of the entire full-time workforce in one province in four months. Pierre Poilievre put it bluntly on May 7th. He hasn't sat down at the negotiating table for five months, Poilievre said of Carney. While the Mexicans are there eating our diplomatic and economic lunch, he's sitting on the sidelines.

[00:04:34]So, what does an 87,000 job hole in one province actually do to a city like Montreal? To a region like Mauricie? To a town like Saint-Croix?

[00:04:43]That's the part the press release doesn't tell you. We're about to. So, you've got South Shore in Saint-Croix, Bestar in Lac-Mégantic, the forestry sector hollowing out, and a federal response designed for 66,000 workers landing in a province that already bled 87,000.

[00:04:59]Now, look at what that does on the ground. In the Montreal Census Metropolitan Area, the second largest metro in this country, the unemployment rate just hit 7.7% the highest it's been since July of 2016 outside the pandemic.

[00:05:13]More than one in 13 working-age adults in Montreal is now out of work and actively searching.

[00:05:19]In the Mauricie region, employment fell by 7.8% year-over-year. That's a small region, mostly wood and metal manufacturing, watching almost one in 12 jobs simply disappear.

[00:05:30]Construction has now lost jobs four months in a row. That's not a statistic.

[00:05:35]That's contractors, farmers, electricians, drywall crews whose paychecks stop showing up. And here's where it lands on the rest of us.

[00:05:43]Quebec's full-time workforce contracted by 110,100 jobs since December. Those are the jobs that pay the mortgage. Those are the jobs that cover dental, retirement, daycare. When that many full-time positions disappear in 4 months, you don't get a recession headline, you get renewals at higher interest rates with one income missing. You get grocery bills climbing while household income shrink. You get a town of 2,700 wondering what happens when the second major employer goes, too.

[00:06:12]And there's one more piece of this that hasn't shown up in the Friday headlines yet, but it's coming. And it's coming for the same households.

[00:06:19]The CUSMA renegotiation window opens next year.

[00:06:23]Five months without Canada at the negotiating table, according to Poilievre. And when you line all of this up, the closures, the towns, the number Carney hoped you wouldn't put next to the numbers Statistics Canada just published, the picture that forms isn't a slowdown, isn't a soft patch, isn't a transition, it's the documented collapse of an entire province's industrial base happening in real time under a government that announced a rescue plan smaller than the problem before the plan even arrived. This isn't one company, it isn't one town, it isn't one month.

[00:06:55]South Shore is the same story as Bestar, is the same story as Remabec, is the same story as Doral, is the same story as Prepack. The plants are empty. The towns are watching. The Statistics Canada numbers are public. And the federal response was built for a problem 1/3 the size of what's already on the books.

[00:07:14]That's what I was pointing at when I said there was one number inside Carney's own package that told you everything. 66,000 nationwide, 87,000 in one province. Now you know. Ottawa promised a recovery. The record shows a contraction. Carney promised a deal. The record shows 5 months of silence at the table. And Quebec didn't lose 43,000 jobs in 1 month. Quebec lost the argument that anyone in Ottawa knew what was coming.

[00:07:41]The biggest payoffs will take time.

[00:07:45]And many Canadians are feeling the pressures right now of everyday expenses.

[00:07:52]Canadians need a boost today and a bridge to tomorrow.