It's the economy, stupid

It doesn't look like Harper will get his majority:



The problem the Tories face is that they didn't anticipate the breadth of this crisis when they called the election. And so they went into it without a coherent response. Big no-no. Harper's initial reaction was to say the Canadian economy was doing fine and deny that anything needed to change, which the opposition parties leapt on.

The irony here is that Harper's policies have nothing to do with the crisis, at least as it pertains to the financial sector. Our financial sector is healthy insofar as it is shielded from the US. Which may not be too reassuring, but the problems we currently face are certainly not a result of Harper favoring US style deregulation.

That is not to say that our economy hasn't been stuttering in other ways (Ontario's economy was basically already in recession before all this hit), but I sometimes think we fail to realize just how dependent we are on the US. 90% of our trade is conducted with our southern neighbor, and that's why Ontario is suffering, not because Harper cut the GST or didn't give enough subsidies to artists.