A number of prominent business leaders formally threw their support behind Pierre Poilievre in the upcoming federal election on Saturday, arguing his Conservative Party will best handle Canada’s slowing economic growth.

The group of more than 30 current and past executives includes Fairfax Financial CEO Prem Watsa, Canaccord Genuity CEO Dan Daviau, former RBC Capital Markets CEO Anthony Fell and former Scotiabank CEO Brian Porter.

They published an open letter in several Canadian newspapers on Saturday saying Poilievre’s plans are best to get the country’s economy “back on track.”

“Productivity has stalled. Economic growth has slowed. Our GDP per capita is shrinking,” the letter reads.

“Nevertheless, this decline is not inevitable — and it’s not the Canada we know and love.”

To turn things around, the letter said Canada needs to eliminate barriers to productivity by streamlining permit processes and cutting outdated regulations that prevent investment and job creation.

It also said the government needs to be more disciplined with its spending, impose lower taxes to make Canada more competitive and develop the country’s natural resources by building pipelines, expanding mining and investing in energy.

The letter, which was also signed by former RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust founder Edward Sonshine, Mattamy Homes CEO Peter Gilgan and past Toronto Blue Jays president Paul Godfrey, is one of the strongest shows of support Poilievre has seen from the business community yet.

His competitor, Liberal Mark Carney, has spent much of the election campaign, which concludes on April 28 when Canadians go to the polls, touting his experience as leader of the central banks in both Canada and England.

He argues that experience leaves him best equipped to address the country’s economic woes and tariff threats from U.S. President Donald Trump.

The Liberals did not immediately respond to request for comment on the letter.

The Conservatives, however, took the missive as a sign that their platform is resonating with the business community.

“Pierre Poilievre’s Canada First Economic Action Plan is being recognized as a strong plan to lower taxes and eliminate red tape to unleash our industries and bring home powerful paycheques for our people and a thriving economy,” Conservative spokesman Sam Lilly said in a statement.

Poilievre revealed earlier this week that his plan is designed to cut bureaucratic red tape by 25 per cent in two years through a “two-for-one” law. The law would see two regulations be repealed for every new one that’s enacted and require that every dollar spent on new administrative costs trigger the cutting of two dollars in other areas.

Meanwhile, Carney has said he will boost interprovincial trade by removing all exemptions under the Canadian Free Trade Agreement, develop a new fund to help link natural resource extraction sites with rail lines and roads and create new programs geared toward training workers.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said it was “no surprise” some business leaders are backing Poilievre and Carney because they’re giving a tax break to the ultra-wealthy,” rather than focusing on “what people actually need—health care, housing, and support when they lose a job.”

“Canadians are working hard but falling behind,” Singh said in a statement. “Wages aren’t keeping up, housing is out of reach, and public services are stretched. The economy isn’t working for most people.”

Millennials are worried they are about to experience a “once-in-a-lifetime” recession. Again.

Dire economic downturns are supposed to be rare, but millennials — defined by the Pew Research Center as those born between 1981 and 1996 — have already had several recessions during formative stages of their lives, from the dot-com bubble burst when most were children, to the Great Recession as they entered the workforce after college, to the Covid-19 pandemic when they were trying to settle into their careers.

Once dubbed the “unluckiest generation,” millennials have postponed major milestones during past recessions. A significant slice of them graduated college between 2007 and 2009 and struggled to find jobs, which led them to delay buying homes, getting married, and making major purchases, such as cars. Then, after the pandemic led to another sharp recession, some millennials, contending with student loans and rising costs of living, decided to rethink having kids.

Now, as the Trump administration’s tariffs program roils global markets, raising fears of another recession, the millennial cohort of approximately 29- to 44-year-olds is expressing their frustration and fatigue over the financial instability that has haunted so much of their lives.

Some have posted videos on TikTok joking about how they have little advice for Gen Zers who may have to navigate their first possible recession. Others have shared how they are preparing for economic turmoil. Most are just going on social media to trade memes and jokes.

“It’s out of our control, and so why not handle it with a sense of humor and joke about it?” said Jeremy Dozier, 38, a real estate agent in Los Angeles County, California, who has posted funny TikTok videos as a way to express his disdain for the current economic situation.

Dozier knows how painful recessions can be: He graduated college in 2008 and was forced to take temp jobs out of college because he couldn’t find full-time work during the Great Recession. By the time the pandemic hit, he had been in a steady job for a decade, but then was laid off. “Every time we start to get ahead or it starts to feel like, ‘OK, things are going to work out,’ the other shoe drops,” he said.

TikTok has been an outlet for him. In a video that Dozier posted in February, he pretends to sob as the song “I Dreamed a Dream” from “Les Misérables.” plays. The caption to the video reads: “Millennials preparing to live through their 4th recession before hitting 40.” The video racked up 23,000 likes and hundreds of comments.

For young people, sarcasm and memes have become increasingly popular coping mechanisms, said Pamela Aronson, a sociology professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

“These social media arenas represent a shared cultural understanding, and these then get spread across groups who are connected to each other digitally,” she said. “’It both reflects and transforms how we think about things.”

Not all members of this generation have fared poorly during past economic uncertainty. A wave of millennials were able to purchase houses during the pandemic. And concern about another recession is not limited to only their age group, said Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University and author of the 2023 book “Generations,” which posits that technology, not major events in history, is the primary cause of generational differences.

“Millennials went through these horrible economic times at the beginning of their adult lives, then built everything back up, did really well, and now are rightfully concerned that if there’s another recession, that they could lose it all again,” Twenge said. But, she added: “I do think this is something that is coming up for people of all ages.”

There was some relief Wednesday afternoon, as stocks soared after President Donald Trump announced that he would pause for 90 days higher tariff rates on dozens of trading partners.

John Sabelhaus, a visiting fellow in economic studies at the Washington-based think tank the Brookings Institution, pointed out that “the overall strategy of the current Congress could be extremely disruptive” still and noted that a financial downturn at this time would be especially damaging to millennials.

“Millennials are exactly at that age where they are building businesses, and they’re trying to make these businesses work,” he said. “It’s always risky, and when you throw in a lot of macroeconomic risk, it just makes it that much worse.”

Christie Cronan, a millennial content creator in Central Florida who has been posting about recession fears, said she feels like her videos have brought comfort to others in her generation.

“Everyone feels validated. This is what people are expecting, that we are in an economic downturn of some sort — whether they want to call it a recession or not,” she said. Dozier, the millennial in California, said posting lighthearted TikToks has prompted other people to open up about their economic anxiety. He said people have shared what they are doing to prepare for financial stress, with some saying they are growing their own food and others commenting that they bought an extra freezer so they can try to stockpile frozen items now before tariffs hit.

“While people in the comments are talking about the struggles they’re going through, it’s all kind of handled with a sense of humor and a sense of community,” he said. “We’re going to weather the storm together.”

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink told CNBC on Friday that he thinks the U.S. economy has weakened to the point of growth possibly turning negative.

“I think we’re very close, if not in, a recession now,” Fink said on “Squawk on the Street.”

Fears of an economic slowdown have risen sharply since President Donald Trump unveiled widespread tariffs last week, sparking a sell-off in the stock market. Trump on Wednesday announced that he was pausing some of those import levies for 90 days, but that move has not been enough to restore confidence in the economy, Fink said.

“I think you’re going to see, across the board, just a slowdown until there’s more certainty. And we now have a 90-day pause on the reciprocal tariffs — that means longer, more elevated uncertainty,” Fink said Friday.

Surveys of consumers and business leaders have shown weakening sentiment in recent months. However, other pieces of economic data like job growth and retail sales have held up better. Fink said consumers may have been stocking up on goods ahead of the threatened tariffs, which could be masking some underlying economic weakness.

Despite his concerns, Fink said he did not think the U.S. was in a financial crisis and he expects “megatrends” in the economy like artificial intelligence would persist.

At an event for the Economic Club of New York on Monday, Fink said that other CEOs also think the U.S. is “probably in a recession.”

Fink’s latest remarks come after BlackRock announced its first-quarter financial results. In a press release Friday morning, the CEO commented that “uncertainty and anxiety about the future of markets and the economy are dominating client conversations.”

The asset management giant’s financial results were mixed. BlackRock reported $11.30 in adjusted earnings per share for the first quarter, above the $10.14 expected by Wall Street analysts, according to LSEG. However, $5.28 billion in revenue was short of the $5.34 billion consensus estimate.

On the assets front, BlackRock reported $84 billion in net inflows during the quarter and ended March with nearly $11.58 trillion under management.

Shares of the firm rose 2.3% on Friday.

The Trump administration is further backing off the in-person requirements it announced for Americans seeking services at the Social Security Administration that were set to go into effect Monday.

Liz Huston, a spokesperson for the White House, said in a statement to NPR on Thursday that telephone services will continue for people seeking services through the agency.

“President Trump has repeatedly promised to protect Social Security and uproot waste, fraud and abuse across the federal government,” she said. “The Social Security anti-fraud team has worked around the clock in person to improve technological capabilities and they are now able to identify fraud on claims filed over the telephone.”

Social Security officials first announced last month that people filing claims or seeking benefits would have to travel in-person to a local field office, if they were unable to use the agency’s online verification system. The policy would have effectively eliminated widely used telephone services for many beneficiaries.

These changes were met with concerns from advocates for seniors and people with disabilities, as well as lawmakers. Dozens of Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to agency leaders asking them to reconsider the change because it would “create additional barriers” for people seeking services — “particularly for those who live far from an office.”

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank based in Washington advocating for “economic justice,” recently published an analysis that found the travel requirement would have amounted to a “45-mile trip for some 6 million seniors.”

According to a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak generally about the Trump administration’s position, the Social Security Administration reversed course on these requirements because the anti-fraud team “implemented new technological capabilities so quickly” that the agency can now “perform anti-fraud checks on all claims filed over the phone.”

These technological improvements, the official said in a statement, will be able to flag abnormal behavior in a person’s account and then those individuals who were flagged would be required to travel in-person for verification.

In a statement, Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, called this reversal “a victory for Social Security beneficiaries across the country.”

“The Trump administration did not change the policy out of the goodness of their hearts,” he said. “They responded to public pressure. This is a victory for advocacy on the grassroots and national level, by and on behalf of the millions of seniors who depend on phone service from the Social Security Administration.”

“The Trump administration has been busy erecting barriers for people simply trying to access their earned benefits. We are glad this one barrier has fallen.”

The Social Security Administration is currently undergoing massive changes – including widespread layoffs, regional office closures and general restructuring of duties across the agency. These changes have worried advocates about access to services that many of the country’s seniors rely on.