As I've written about previously, Canada's economic picture hasn't been the rosy wonderland of strength Harper and Flaherty painted throughout the election. During the campaign Harper accused opposition leaders of using rhetoric to talk down the economy. This self-serving charge was nonsense on many levels, but primarily so because fundamental economic weakness was present long before the election was called.

Mr. Harper's degree in economics has often been touted as reason enough to entrust him with the leadership of our country during poor economic times. Its been my experience that few economists rise above the pack to see significant changes in business conditions or fundamental problems in the economic firmament. Everything I've seen from Mr. Harper tells me he's a middle of the road economist--nothing special there. Yet voters were willing to hand Harper the keys again without even having asked the pregnant question: Why are we entrusting the leadership of our country to an economist who presided over the ongoing economic decline?

My own belief is if we were going to have some sort of big crash or recession, we probably would have had it by now. Stephen Harper, September 15 2008

With the election now over, perhaps those suffering from partisanship-induced temporary blindness will recover from their affliction sufficiently so that we can take a more appropriately critical look at Canada's leadership.

First, lets put this whole "Canada won't see a recession" nonsense to rest. Even this week The Conference Board of Canada, a self-serving group of business people, have made the incredulous claim that Canada will skirt recession. Incroyable. Folks, the election's over - you can start talking plainly again.

It takes an agile and open mind to see and size up the nature and scope of economic weakness before hard reports and statistics, which always lag by weeks or months, later confirm our innate sense of conditions. The hard data coming out over the next few weeks will forever dash the "no recession" claims of Harper and the Conference Board. We are virtually there now, as you can see from today's sampling:

• U.S. travel by car to Canada continues to fall off a cliff, down %19.8 percent in August compared with the same period the year prior (impact: hundreds of millions of direct spending by U.S. travellers in Canada)
• A massive drop in sales by Canadian manufacturers in August, fell broadly across 18 of 21 different industry sectors, registering a %3.7 percent decline from July. Inventories are on the rise, sales are down, a troubling trend. (impact: a drop of more than 2 billion in sales)
• The U.S. recession is starting to assert itself more forcefully in reports coming out. Today's Philly Fed Manufacturing Index for October plummeted to a stunning -37.5, a drop roughly three times expectations. This barometer of the regional economy followed yesterday's NY Fed Empire State survey which fell to its lowest level ever at -24.6 (impact: impossible to fully quantify but represents a major downward shift in business confidence within the very large manufacturing sector, justifying the concern the recession will not be soft and shallow but hard, deep, and long).

The bottom line: Canadian businesses are already being significantly affected by the erosion of consumer and business confidence in the U.S., and by the parallel track affecting confidence and results here in Canada. The picture being painted now is off data accumulated in the periods before the election was called. Its only going to get worse from here, no matter where the stock market ends up going in the short term.

Stephen Harper will almost certainly preside over the worst recession to hit Canada in my adult life. Leading up to the recession he lived in la-la land, boasting to anyone who would listen (mostly outside Canada's borders) that Canada was an emerging energy superpower. Our dollar surged above parity with the U.S. dollar during this period, further imperilling manufacturing activity in Canada. While the Loonie has over the past few weeks since fallen off sharply (from parity to now near 1.2 CAD to 1 USD), it'll be cold comfort to Canadian manufacturers as their customers down south are no longer in a buying mood, no matter what the price.

What will Harper slash? At the same time economic conditions have been weakening, Harper was also steadily undermining Canada's finances, leaving no spare funds for contingencies. Harper's decision to savage the federal piggy bank was ideologically driven, not born of prudence, and we'll all pay the price because we get the government we deserve.