All Wind and Rabbit Tracks

This wonderful story by Frances Russell  published August 28, 2013 is a strong counter to harpers claim he is a good economic manager. He is not! His record speaks for itself and thanks to Frances we see how bad of a job he is doing for Canada. "Jobs, the economy and safe streets." Canadians have heard this mantra from the Harper Conservatives for eight years now. The more it's repeated, the more the public's attention is drawn to its failure on all sides.. Undaunted, the Conservatives have now added a fourth pledge - a balanced budget by 2016, coincidentally, the year of the next federal election. Former Manitoba Progressive Conservative Premier Sterling Lyon had a phrase for such empty political puffery: "All wind and rabbit tracks," he would say. Given that Canada's current deficit stands at $18.7 billion, the Conservatives' balanced budget pledge has saddled them with a tall order indeed, made much taller by the prime minister's decision back in the 2005-06 federal campaign to cut the GST by two points from seven to five per cent. That decision deprives Ottawa of $14 billion in revenue each and every year. Thanks in part to Ottawa's aggressive immigration policy, the nation's working-age population has grown by 1.8 million but the economy has only managed to spin out 950,000 jobs. In a recent analysis, the Citizens for Public Justice concludes that Canada has to create another 500,000 jobs just to get Canada back to where it was before the recession. Equally concerning is the poor quality of the jobs that are being created: mostly part-time, low-wage and unstable, geared apparently for the rising tide of temporary foreign workers being rushed here. For this dismal state of affairs, Canadians have to thank the hollowing out of this nation's manufacturing sector, the sector that supplied good, stable, well-paying jobs until corporate "free" trade agreements multiplied in the 1980s and 1990s. That freed capital to go global. Governments responded by embracing neo-conservatism and monetarism. Predictably, poverty and instability began to balloon in the so-called First World. As an economist and very proud of it, the prime minister should take a look at the growing alarm even among his orthodox colleagues about the current, now multi-year, economic fad known as quantitative easing, or ultra-low interest rates. In a recent article in Rabble.ca, economist and political scientist Duncan Cameron notes that former Bank of Canada Deputy Governor William White has likened low interest rates to having one foot on the accelerator. "And with the Harper government curbing spending, White observed, Canada has the other foot on the brake," Cameron writes. This contradictory policy needs to be fixed, Cameron continues. "The obvious choice is for the government to take the foot off the brake and spend borrowed money for needed public investments." However, since the Harper government is ideologically opposed to government spending except indirectly on tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, it's likely to take its foot off the brake by lowering taxes even more rather than spending on needed social and economic infrastructure. Conveniently, that provides it with the excuse to reduce spending further and force down wages yet again. "Conservatives believe the marketplace works fine and any problems can be fixed by allowing wages to adjust," Cameron continues. "Unemployment is explained by the failure of rates of pay to fall because of minimum wages, unions, employment insurance, welfare and other market imperfections which need to be eliminated or reduced." The cumulative failure of this dogged - and dominant -- neo-conservative belief that governments and societies can starve themselves into prosperity is becoming ever more obvious as the Harper Conservatives age in office. Unemployment, which stood at 6.6 per cent when the Conservatives took office, is now at 7.2 per cent with 1.4 million out of work, the Toronto /Star/ reports. Flaherty's 2012 budget prediction of 2.4 per cent growth by 2013 has been scaled back to 1.7 per cent. Canada's job creation record is now below the majority of developed countries. We currently rank20^th among the 34 member countries of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development according to the latest OECD statistics released in mid-July. In fact, Canada has fallen behind a majority of developed countries when it comes to job creation ever since the 2008-09 recession. When adjusted for population growth, the country now has fewer jobs than it did before the recession. An analysis conducted by Canadian Auto Workers economist Jim Stanford shows that Canada's employment rate, that is the percentage of Canadians who have a job, fell sharply in 2008-09. To date, it has recovered only a fraction of that loss. Worse, Stanford's analysis shows that relative to population, Canada has 1.4 per cent fewer jobs than in 2008, although Canada's working population has grown by 1.75 million in that same period. Given all this dreary and disappointing news, you would think the government would be running for cover from its hoary, four-year-old "feel good" Economic Action Plan ads, but no. The ads, which already have cost taxpayers $113 million, are still being churned out for television, radio and print distribution. Canadians, however, have long since given up listening to, watching or reading them, let alone believing them. The polling firm Harris-Decima surveyed 2,003 people earlier this year and found only three who said they had bothered to check the ads. A mere six per cent who recalled the ads reported that they'd done anything as a result. And among those who did do something, nine said they only reacted to express their displeasure. Even more damning was the fact that not one person had called the toll-free numbers displayed on the ads. "Does this minimalist response suggest Canadians are apathetic?" asked the Ottawa Citizen in a July 22 editorial. "Nope. It shows that Canadians can smell propaganda when it's shoved in their collective face." Frances Russell was born in Winnipeg and graduated from the University of Manitoba with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and political science. A journalist since 1962, she has covered and commented on politics in Manitoba, Ontario, B.C. and Ottawa, working for The Winnipeg Tribune, United Press International, The Globe and Mail, The Vancouver Sun and The Winnipeg Free Press as well as freelanced for The Toronto Star, The Edmonton Journal, CBC Radio and TV and Time Magazine. She is the author of two award-winning books on Manitoba history: Mistehay Sakahegan - The Great Lake: The Beauty and the Treachery of Lake Winnipeg and The Canadian Crucible - Manitoba’s Role in Canada’s Great Divide. Both won the Manitoba Historical Society Award for popular history.