Updated throughout the day when so moved...

Broadcast consortium announces leader's debate details (April 1, 2011) Put your questions to the leaders.

Ending Canada's 'benign dictatorship' (March 30, 2011 - Terry Milewski, CBC News) Here's a little test: what would the Conservatives do if they found a clip of Michael Ignatieff calling Canada a "benign dictatorship?" Right: they'd put it in an attack ad. Another test: what would the Liberals do if they caught Stephen Harper saying that? Right: nothing. At least, that's what they've done with it so far.

The debates mess (3) - The whole thing (March 31, 2011 - Andrew Coyne, Macleans) We should also abolish this odious business of having separate debates in each language. The end result is not only to halve the audience for each debate - an election, of all times, ought to be a time when the whole country comes together - but the French debate becomes, inevitably, a debate for and about Quebec, with shameless pandering to match. [...] Whatever format we choose, whatever rules we set, they should be set outside the confines of any one election campaign. We have to stop pretending that televised debates are some sort of novelty. They've been with us for 50 years, and are now as integral to any election campaign as lawn signs and all-candidates meetings. It's time they were incorporated into the election laws.

Why the TV consortium excluded Elizabeth May (April 1, 2011 - The Globe and Mail) Broadcast consortium chairman Troy Reeb discusses how the decision was reached to bar Elizabeth May from participating in the televised leaders debates.

PM will now take your questions... but only five (April 1, 2011 - Jennifer Ditchburn, The Canadian Press) The yellow steel fence that kept reporters far from Stephen Harper on Thursday was a potent symbol of his election campaign. Harper is running a tight travelling show with little room for spontaneity, where national media are limited to four questions a day -- and kept a safe distance from the Conservative leader. Harper was pressed by frustrated reporters to explain the strict control of his campaign and his reluctance to answer more questions, in contrast to the dozens that are taken by his rivals. The Conservatives rode to power in 2006 promising greater transparency, more accountability and better access to information.

Ignatieff pressures Harper for 1-on-1 debate (April 1, 2011 - CBC News) Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff is keeping the pressure on Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, writing an open letter to demand a one-on-one leaders' debate. Ignatieff published the open letter on the Liberal Party's website Friday morning.

Open letter to Stephen Harper (April 1, 2011 - Michael Ignatieff, Liberal.ca) [...] Perhaps I can make this easier for you. I will meet you at the time and place of your choosing. There is no need for complicated or convoluted debate formats. Just two podiums - and you and me. A true, honest-to-goodness battle of ideas and visions.

This is the kind of contest that Canadians are yearning for. I know because I have been meeting ordinary Canadians of all ages, backgrounds and political allegiances at events across Canada. It's absolutely exhilarating. In fact, I would recommend that you try it.

In closing, I urge you to reconsider your reversal and stick to your word. I strongly believe our fellow Canadians deserve this chance to see the different visions of leadership between the only two people who can become prime minister of this country at the end of this election.

Layton vows to hire and train more family doctors (April 1, 2011 - The Globe and Mail) The NDP Leader arrived at Laurentian University in this nickel city Friday to pledge that a government led by him would invest in the training of more health-care professionals.

NDP goes deep behind enemy lines in quest to slay Tory majority (April 1, 2011 - Gloria Galloway, The Globe and Mail) Mr. Layton is nothing but an optimist. And he does not take kindly to those who reject the image of his party as giant slayer.

Ignatieff vows small, open government (April 1, 2011 - QMI) Despite laying down three major, pan-Canadian policy planks in as many days - on education, pensions and child care -- with multi-million or billion-dollar price tags, Ignatieff maintains the measures won't bloat government bureaucracy. "On the contrary," he told QMI Agency in an one-on-one interview on the Liberal plane between Winnipeg and London, Ont. "These are initiatives that have one common characteristic. They help Canadian families with a minimum of bureaucracy... It's not big government, it's government that sends the help directly to the family." The Liberal leader said he is also committed to creating an accountable, transparent government that welcomes public participation and respects the independence of government watchdogs.

Elizabeth May and Linda Keen to hold joint press conference (March 31, 2011 - Green Party) Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green party of Canada, will hold a join press conference on Friday, April 1 [12:00pm Pacific], with Linda Keen, former President of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

Former nuclear safety watchdog endorses May (April 1, 2011 - CBC News) Linda Keen, the former head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, is endorsing Elizabeth May in her race to unseat former Minister of Natural Resources Gary Lunn. Keen was ousted from her job by Lunn in 2008 after she ordered the National Research Universal reactor in Chalk River, Ont., shut down over safety concerns, sparking a major disruption in the world's supply of medical isotopes. May is running against Lunn in the Saanich-Gulf Islands riding just outside Victoria, B.C.

Originally entitled more dryly "2008-09 Canada Annual Financial Report - Budgetary Balance just released", I went for the punchier headline and this tell-all graphic in deference to Halloween:

Regular readers here will recall that I've been saying that Harper had already plunged the country into deficit and new debt since before the last election, back when Harper stated categorically that "we will not be running a deficit". The annual report reiterates what we've been saying here all along.

You can read the full annual report (PDF) at: http://www.fin.gc.ca/afr-rfa/2009/afr-rfa09-eng.pdf; the HTML version will be published "as soon as possible" at: http://www.fin.gc.ca/afr-rfa/2009/afr-rfa09-eng.asp

Harper claims he'll fix this problem without raising taxes or cutting programs. No one in the media or economic community believes him, nor should you or I.

We already know that Harper hates government and taxes so just keep this in mind: If he ever gets a majority, what programs will Harper slash?

Harper has added 170 billion [1] of debt via new borrowing since 2008, a goodly chunk of that having been added before the 2008 election.

Stretch your mind back to the fall of last year, the halcyon days of Election 2008. You may recall Stephen Harper on more than one occasion stating categorically that he would not engage in deficit financing nor take on new debt? [2]

He lied. By Election 2008 Harper's "conservative" government was already spending its way deeper into debt at a rate not seen in well over a decade.

Perhaps our politicians fib but numbers do not lie and the government helpfully publishes them months after the fact at http://www.fin.gc.ca/pub/fm-rf-index-eng.asp. The chart and table are produced from these sources.

What say you, 30 million Canadians? Do you enjoy being lied to by Stephen Harper and his gang?

Speaking of secrecy, our government officials and the elected mouthpieces who notionally run these departments often hide or keep secret important truths simply by talking about something else.

If one reads the latest news release from the Department of Finance one might conclude that Canada and Jimmy Flaherty are doing a good job.

Yet the secret truth, available with just a little digging, is that Canada dipped deeper in debt in December 2008, to the tune of an additional 3.8 billion on top of somewhere between 15 and 50 billion dollars of new debt incurred so far this fiscal year.

The chart illustrates a total new debt line (dark blue) and a dotted "best case" line. There are two primary factors which drive the difference between the two lines:

1. Year over year there was an announced change in how certain crown corporations obtain their borrowing; where previously said crown corporations (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), the Business Development Bank of Canada and Farm Credit Canada) obtained their own borrowing, this fiscal year the federal government proper arranged this financing to lever the stronger borrowing power of the national government and thus save some interest charges.
2. After the election - you might recall it was the election where Harper and Flaherty tried hard to pretend that all was well, that Canada would never go into deficit - Flaherty did an about face and called the situation facing the world and Canada a "crisis" and decided to help out the Canadian banks to the tune of buying $25 billion in CMHC-insured mortgages off the banks so they could clean up their balance sheets. Its something of a shell game.

Points 1 and 2 are related. CMHC is one of the crown corporations the government is obtaining financing for. Ultimately we taxpayers are all on the hook for what happens to these mortgages, because if as in the U.S. there is a surplus of defaulted mortgages over the insurance funds protecting them, guess who will be paying for the mess? You and me.

Even if we give Flaherty the benefit of doubt, writ large, and take off 10B + 25B = $35 billion dollars from the gross new accumulated federal debt, we are still left with over $15 billion dollars in new debt incurred by Stephen Harper's government.

Flaherty can play word games and claim that the government is still capable of operating without a deficit but the reality is that we are in fact 3.8B deeper in the hole in December, or $15.2B of new debt on a cumulative basis so far this fiscal year.

Liars, or incompetents, the Conservatives can't be trusted or believed in or out of government.

We've just completed an election which Stephen Harper promised we wouldn't have until 2009. Harper broke his own promise and his own law, merely to try to gain partisan advantage - something his own law was to prevent from happening in the future.

All through the election Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty stressed that the land was strong, that there were no real economic issues threatening Canada. Only after headline after headline made the news of impending economic doom in the U.S., and it became more than clear that the same sorts of troubles were, and will continue to, affect Canada, did Harper and Flaherty even acknowledge the problem. They almost lost the election. Perhaps they'll lose the country.

Now, immediately after the election, Flaherty has finally awoken to the economic crisis and wants us to believe they've been proactive on the file all along. This is nothing but raw bull manure.

During the election Harper and Flaherty said no-way, no-how would we see the government of Canada go into deficit spending, even though in four of six months so far the country has been in deficit, spending is up, revenue down, and public debt is rising, not falling. This will only be worse going forward as the economic picture before year end in March will have deteriorated significantly.

After the election now Harper is now calling potential deficit spending as "essential".

Canadians can't believe a word these jokers have to say before, during, or after an election.

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.

Harper and Flaherty give banks $25 billion in cash but have virtually done nothing for Canada's forestry and manufacturing sectors under attack

On Friday Conservative Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced a $25 billion dollar plan to buy packages of mortgages off Canada's banks in exchange for cold hard cash. The nature of the bailout package has been misconstrued by both Flaherty and Harper. Amid the rhetoric lets not lose sight of what's really going on: Canadian banks are being given a huge gift by the Harper government that will further line their pockets and do nothing for yours or mine.

"We are not going in and buying bad assets. What we're doing is simply exchanging assets that we already hold the insurance on" Stephen Harper, October 10 2008

Harper is misleading Canadians here, as the government is indeed buying assets. If you provide me something tangible, like an apple, and in exchange I give you cash, I call that buying. Wouldn't you?

The government is exchanging a large portfolio of mortgages for cash, cash which is going to the banks. Canada is buying those mortgages off the banks.

Harper also said "This is not a bailout; this is a market transaction that will cost the government nothing", and this is not accurate either. The government has to go to market to raise $25 billion dollars from the bond market. In order to attract capital in these troubled times it will have to pay an interest rate on that debt which is significantly higher than it was even five months ago. While the difference between the cost of money, and the interest rate being paid on these mortgages the government is buying off banks, will provide a net return to the government, it will do so only if its management costs and the rate of mortgage defaults totals less than that difference. Still, it's likely the government will turn a small profit.

However to say it costs Canada nothing to do this transaction remains inaccurate. First, Canada's total debt will go up by another $25 billion dollars on top of the 10 - $21billion of new debt (as of July) the government has heaped on top of Canada's debt pile and this is an unsettling trend. Should this debt-growth continue, rating agencies will take a hard look at Canada's financial stability and may downgrade our credit worthiness, which will lead to higher borrowing costs for the government of Canada. That can cost taxpayers interest rate charge increases measured in the millions.

Secondly that $25 billion dollars of new debt represents something of an opportunity cost.

Could $25 billion in direct investments be used to generate more economic activity in Canada? Could $25 billion be used to help move Canada to a greener future and thus generate more, new, economic activity? Could a government which believed in Canada more have fought for a better settlement for Canada's forestry sector in 2006? Could a government which had more foresight helped stave off the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs, lost to the U.S., Mexico, and Asia? Harper and Flaherty have done nothing to stop the continued hollowing out of our country.

Was the $25 billion dollar bailout even necessary? For months and months Harper and Flaherty have said that Canada's banks don't need the help, that Canada's economy is strong and doesn't suffer from the same issues as the U.S. is plagued with. True - costs for banks have been rising as a consequence of the credit crunch. But Canada's banks were not starved for credit. Their operations have not been halted. There are no banks failing here in this country.

The bottom line: getting $25 billion in low cost capital from Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty is a real gift to the banks that will do more for their balance sheets than it will do for yours or mine.

One of the richest people in the world, George Soros favours a carbon tax.

George Soros, currently the 99th wealthiest person in the world, can teach any government a thing or two about economies and taxation policy. Certainly Mr. Harper would do well to listen.

Click for video

In this far-reaching interview primarily centred on the spreading global financial crisis, Mr. Soros also speaks to the challenge of climate change and indicates his preference for a carbon tax despite the political opposition to it.

There is a common interest. And this belief that everybody pursuing his self-interests will maximize the common interests or will take care of the common interests is a false idea. It's a suitable idea for those who are rich, who are successful, who are powerful. It suits them to justify you know, enjoying the fruits without paying taxes. The idea of paying taxes is an absolute no-no, right?

Unpatriotic. So, yes, you must have, in my opinion, you need, for instance, a tax on carbon emissions. But that is unacceptable politically. So we are going to have cap and trade. And the trading will have all kinds of loopholes and misuse of the regulations and all kinds of ways of making money without actually dealing with the problem that it's designed to cure. So that's how the political process distorts things. (Video | Transcript) George Soros, as interviewed by Bill Moyers

Stephen Harper opposes a carbon tax; in fact he proposes to reduce taxes so much that the federal government will be forced to slash programs, and certainly will have no spare capacity to react to crisis (such as now) or invest substantially in new areas. Who is making these decisions? Someone who hasn't run a substantial business ever in his life, and a finance minister that left Ontario deep in debt.

Who makes more sense to trust? Backing a carbon tax are hundreds of economists joined with some of the most smartest, and wealthiest, people in the world. Can we really trust Stephen Harper, on record as a climate change denier, who hasn't run a business bigger than (or even as big as?) a submarine sandwich franchise?

I'll put my money on Soros any day.

Harper's ideas are dangerous and he is not worth the risk of being given even a another minority government.

[Editor: While I favour a carbon tax and believe cap and trade has its place, an election is apparently no time to be discussing what should be an easy to understand concept given political interests are focussed on blowing up any rational attempt at discussion in the pursuit of partisan objectives that map on to their ideology. My primary interest in pushing on this button is that the do-nothing lobby / the climate change denial lobby, is as strong as ever. If you don't think the climate-change denial lobby isn't still alive and kicking, look at this U.S. Senate Republican (Harper's closest allies) weblog.]

Facing accusations he is running a deficit already, Conservative leader Stephen Harper denies the charge "No. That's absolutely not the case". Yet to date this year the Harper government has racked up more than $20 billion in new public debt, an amount far larger than during any similar time frame or period during the last 8 years. What is Stephen Harper hiding?

(Please pass this around broadly - copy and use as your own material or attribute to me as you please. Media are welcome to use this material with no restrictions whatsoever. All sources and an excel spreadsheet are provided at the end of this article as links and attachments)

The Short Story

Conservative leader Stephen Harper continues to claim that Canada is enjoying a surplus, yet his Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty this calendar year has racked up an operational deficit in six of the past seven reported months, totaling over $23 billion dollars, or $20.3 billion for this fiscal year to date. In either case these amounts are unprecedented during this decade.

A child, let alone a trained economist like Stephen Harper, can easily see that one of these things is not like the other, one of these things is not the same:

Stephen Harper is hiding this massive $20 billion dollar plus deficit behind the use of cleverly chosen words, but semantics can't hide the fact that our country's finances are in precarious shape at a time when world economic uncertainty has clearly caught Harper's government completely off guard.

In Stephen Harper's Own Words

Stephen Harper has repeatedly claimed his management is one of prudence, that his government is running a surplus, and on Tuesday he specifically said his government would not run a deficit (Reuters, Oct. 7 2008), after having danced around that issue of late (Calgary Herald, Oct. 6 2008).

Our position in this election is we're not going to run deficits Stephen Harper, October 7 2008

In an October 7th interview with CBC News anchor Peter Mansbridge, Stephen Harper was again asked about opposition claims that his government is already running a deficit. (Relevant sections appear near minute 7:20, and between minute 9:00 and 10:30 of the video at the link)

In the interview during one exchange Mansbridge asks Harper if he will allow the country to go into deficit and he specifically asks if claims by the opposition that the government is already in deficit are true.

Harper:

We are three billion in surplus so far this year and we were only projecting a two and a half billion surplus for the year.

Mansbridge:

So when the Liberals and the NDP suggest you are fiddling the numbers?

Harper:

No. That's absolutely not the case and you can see that in the growth of uh, the growth of our nominal revenue.

That's not an answer. "Nominal revenue" doesn't speak to the net balance and whether the country is operating in or facing a deficit. One has to look at both revenue and expenses, as any accounting 101 student learns in school. An economist like Stephen Harper should not be playing cute tricks with terminology or hiding behind cleverly chosen words to duck the issue.

The numbers do not lie. Using data from the Ministry of Finance "Fiscal Monitor", we can easily calculate for ourselves that Canada has been operating in a deficit in six of the past seven monthly reporting periods. In short, expenses have been higher than the total of revenue and cash on hand.

Not only has the country been living through an operational deficit for more than half a year, the numbers are huge, far out of the norm, as the chart leading this article clearly illustrates.

Coincident with a rapid unwinding of the world economy, government revenues are not keeping pace with expenses and this problem will only worsen from here. For millions of Canadian families what's happening is all too familiar - we can clearly see our country is going further into debt, even as Stephen Harper seems unaware and detached from the real world.

When families reach their own personal wall on spending and debt, they know what comes next - cutting back. The logical question for the leader of the Conservative Party is therefore what will Stephen Harper slash?

Harper Hiding Behind Semantics

While Stephen Harper is technically correct in stating that Canada has a budgetary surplus, if we look past the semantics, Canada is really facing, today, an operational deficit of proportions never before seen this decade. How can he claim otherwise? Its simple: Harper is hiding behind very cleverly chosen words. Simply put, budgetary revenue and expenses do not encompass all government revenue and expenses. These "off-budget" items can easily put the country in surplus, or in deficit, as is the case right now.

(See the end of this article for an excel spreadsheet attachment which provides all the raw data and an embedded chart.)

In contrast during the same period in 2007 the government had a 13.4 billion surplus; the difference between then and now represents an incredible $36.4 billion dollar swing from the positive to the negative. What's really going on Steven Harper and Jim Flaherty?

Particularly in these troubled economic times clever words and semantics should not be allowed to block a fulsome discussion over the real state of our country's financial picture.

Putting This In Context - Understanding the terminology

Conservative leader Stephen Harper has been hiding behind terminology without offering to Canadians the unvarnished details they deserve.

As terminology can be used to portray a picture which is misleading, lets put this in terms that every Canadian can readily identify with.

Imagine we are talking about our household budget. You run a household and your family brings a certain amount of income in each month to pay the bills and hopefully put some away in the form of savings or perhaps pay off longer term debts like mortgages.

You know what your monthly income will be, more or less, and what your expenses are likely to be on average. Once in a while most will have larger expenses, planned or by surprise, that perhaps require one to reach for financing - be it a credit card, or a short term loan - to meet. Examples might include a yearly car insurance fee or an unexpected repair bill.

The government isn't so different. It has income in the form of revenue largely raised through taxation and fees, and it certainly has expenses that are both planned and regular or are otherwise well known, as well as irregular expenses and the odd unplanned need to meet.

Here's a terminology table comparing regular household terms with their equivalent terms employed by the government of Canada:

• Monthly income = Revenue
• Monthly Income less Expenses = Budgetary Balance
• Irregular or unplanned expenses = Non Budgetary Transactions
• Monthly cash flow surplus = Source, while a
• Monthly cash flow shortfall = Requirement

Lets assign some variables to certain terms. Budgetary Balance we'll reference as variable "A" while Non Budgetary Transactions shall be labelled "B".

Lets label as "C" as net cash flow, or Financial Source (Requirement). This value is calculated simply as the difference between A and B, and it's this value which provides the charts and tables in this article with their important meaning.

Cash flow is a concept most Canadians understand intuitively. If you don't have cash in your wallet, or in the bank, but have needs which can't be put off, then there is no recourse - we go into (or further into) debt. Those debts might be charges to a credit card, or a short term loan, or a raid on the savings account our an IOU in the kid's piggy banks.

Like most families, the government routinely experiences ups and downs with cash flow. The chart above illustrates there is something of a pattern where government has greater needs than at other times of the year. Revenue doesn't always come in when the expenses do, thus from time to time its perfectly normal for the government to borrow money, to increase the public debt. Over the past decade Canada has been able to balance its books and enjoy surpluses, but what we see today is not routine at all, as the chart above clearly shows.

Even though it's normal for the government of Canada to meet its bills through issuing short term debt, it is far from normal for the government to have issued so much debt, so quickly, so early in the year. As it stands now the Harper government has issued more debt already this year than in any other year during this decade.

Canadians should rightly be concerned about this. Stephen Harper and his finance minister Jim Flaherty have been raiding our piggy banks, leaving us with a very big IOU, at the same time as government revenues will fall due to world economic uncertainty and recession.

Rising expenses (Harper government spending is up significantly) and falling revenues on top of all the debt which has already been taken on during Harper's watch is not what Canadians expect from their government.

Mr. Harper is misleading the Canadian people, hiding behind cleverly chosen words. Fortunately he can be held to account, as the evidence is perfectly clear: Canada is currently in operational deficit and facing the first fiscal year deficit in over a decade; It's all happening on Stephen Harper's watch.

Sources:

1. Interview of Stephen Harper by CBC News anchor Peter Mansbridge, October 7 2008. Relevant sections at 7:25 and between 9:00 - 10:00 minutes. Video link
2. The Fiscal Monitor, a service of the Ministry of Finance which provides summary financial information for every year dating back to 1996. Web page link
3. Excel spreadsheet providing a compilation of all financial source/requirement data (cashflow) for periods reported during this decade, data sourced from The Fiscal Monitor. Includes charts. Link to spreadsheet

Are you and yours better off today than when Harper rode into town?

The answer is going to be no, for persons with union or private pensions, retirement savings, businesses depending on credit and equity markets, dependence on the Canada Pension Plan, requiring a mortgage, needing insurance, buying a home, seeking shelter, requiring government investment in social programs... living...

Timing says some of us won't notice the impact of the great Canadian market crash of 2008 until weeks and months have passed, but we'll all notice in time.

Harper has slashed government revenues while revenues were climbing. Now they are going to fall... dramatically so. Ask another question: what will Harper slash next, and will it impact you and yours?