Head Tale

via Broadbent Institute

Originally coined by Bill Clinton advisor, James Carville, the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid” has become a useful shorthand for what many elections are really about no matter how much politicians try to focus voters on other meaningless distractions.

This holds true in the current Canadian election where surveys have shown that 60% of people feel that the economy is the single most important issue.  And if you figure in that “jobs” comes in at 20%, that means up to 80% of Canadians feel that some aspect of our economy is the most important issue in this election.

So let’s take a look at some of the…

Facts About The Canadian Economy Under Steven Harper

• Simply put, the Harper Conservatives have the worst economic record of any government in Canada’s post-war history.
  

  The most damning aspect of the Conservative legacy is not a short-term cyclical downturn. It is a longer-run failure to stimulate growth, job-creation, innovation, and investment.

• A big part of this is their unrelenting focus on the resource sector instead of diversification so that when the price of oil tumbles, the entire economy slumps.
• Canada has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs under his watch.  Steven Harper has the lowest change in the employment rate since Louis St. Laurent and is the first government to have negative growth since John Diefenbaker 50 years ago
• The Canadian dollar is at its lowest level in nearly a decade when only five short years ago, it was trading at par with the US dollar.
• We’ve had not one but two recessions under Steven Harper’s government.  (To steal a line from Tom Mulcair:  “Steven Harper’s Conservatives are the only government who, when asked about the recession they governed through, can say ‘Which one?'”)
• Contrary to their campaign messages, the Harper government raised, not lowered, your taxes.
• As illustrated by the graph at the top of this post, Harper has had the lowest GDP growth of any Canadian Prime Minister in the post-war era and is the only one with <2% growth.
• The Harper Conservatives have repeatedly focused on policies that benefit the wealthiest Canadians rather than those who struggle with less.
• Compared to other G7 nations, the Harper Conservatives rank last in 7 of 16 indicators of economic performance.

Conservatives tend to be perceived as best party for the economy but, as much as it pains me to say, the Liberals actually have a *way* better track record than the Conservatives in managing the economy in good times and bad.

Beyond that, the fact is that the NDP actually have the most fiscally responsible record of any governing party in Canadian history – a huge surprise to most people who buy into the idea of “tax and spend socialists”.  But the reality is, going back to Tommy Douglas, the NDP realised the banks and corporate sector were not allies for their ambitious plans to improve the lives of everyday workers.  So by keeping the books balanced, they stood the best chance of getting things done (not to mention the benefit of not paying a bunch of money in interest.)