Wednesday Morning Links

Assorted post-debate material for your mid-week reading.

- Douglas Bell notes Liam McHugh-Russell's appeal for people to vote for what they really want:

Today, people love Layton and they aren't afraid of an NDP-led government: if there is an option for an NDP-Liberal coalition, people prefer Layton and his party to lead more than two to one. The problem is, they just don't think it's going to happen.
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So the question to Canadians is: why not vote NDP, leave the Liberals in the wilderness, strike a blow against Quebec separatism and get the government you want? All that's stopping you is the belief that it can't happen.

- Susan Delacourt posts on the unfortunate rewards consistently reaped by politicians who simply pretend that embarrassing questions don't exist. And sadly, the result of last night's election debate looks to fit the pattern.

- Meanwhile, there's another addition to the list of blatant Harper government lies which the Cons will presumably ignore until it's too late to hold them accountable, as draft documents show a border security agreement in the works months before the Cons directly denied that anything of the sort was under discussion.

- Finally, a double dose of Dan Gardner: first on the importance of the public debate which the Harper Cons are so eager to stifle...

often the disagreements of our representatives reflects disagreements among Canadians. We have different values and priorities, different visions. Very simply, we disagree.

That's fine in a mature democracy. We disagree, we debate, we discuss and negotiate. And if we still can't find a reasonable compromise, we vote. It's all good.

But not to Stephen Harper, it seems. Underlying his comments, particularly in the first half of the debate, was a tone of disdain for Parliamentary "bickering." It was all so annoying to him. As head of government, he had important things to deal with. Why should he be bothered with this bickering? Give him a majority so he needn't bother.
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Surveys tell us that half of Canadians are so clueless about Canadian governance that they actually think the people elect the prime minister. Rather than sweep away that ignorance, Harper makes use of it. Indeed, he fosters it in order to advance his immediate political interests.

You want to hear squalid? Don't listen to Parliament. Listen to Stephen Harper talk about the constitution of Canada.

...and second, his reminder that the Cons' attempts to take credit for an economic recovery are utter nonsense on multiple fronts:

(I)f Harper deserves credit for the economic recovery, shouldn't he also be blamed for the recession? The Liberals tried to make this argument but it never really stuck. And rightly so. The recession was obviously caused by forces beyond our borders.

But the same is true of the recovery. "We don't have a lot of independent control over our economy, for good or for bad," Don Drummond, former TD chief economist told me last month. "The bad part of it is the rest of the world dragged us into this mess. But the flip side of it is that for Canada's economy to repair itself is largely dependent on what happens in the global economy."
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Look at Australia, our economic and political cousin. As one may guess, Australia's prime minister is not Stephen Harper. And yet, Australia survives. Indeed, it thrives. Thanks mainly to commodity prices, Australia's economy is booming.

Australia also underscores a final, critical point. Canadians have an exaggerated sense of how well Canada is doing. Yes, as Conservatives like to note, the latest OECD report shows Canada's economic growth is among the best in the G7. We're doing relatively well, no question. But we're hardly leading the world, a fact evident in the statistic that people care the most about. Canada's unemployment rate was 7.8 per cent in January. That's better than the 8.4 per cent OECD average. It's better than Spain, Ireland, the U.S. and Italy. But it's about the same as the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Sweden, Finland, and even Belgium, which has been without a government for almost a year. And it's much higher than the unemployment rate in Austria, Germany, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands -where the rate is 4.3 per cent.

In Australia, the unemployment rate is five per cent. A sudden increase to the Canadian level would be considered a national disaster.

If there is indeed a uniquely sunlit island of tranquillity in the world, it's not us. And Stephen Harper cannot take the credit.