Harper "Canada is not the U.S."....... No, we’re twice as bad.

How many times did we hear in the October 2008 election from Harper that “Canada is not the US”, as a means to provide Canadians with false assurance about the true state of Canada's economy? Harper was right. We’re not the US. Turns out, we are 22% of the US. They lost 598,000 jobs in January and we lost 129,000, which is twice the rate of job loss in Canada that we would have normally expected, as Canada’s economy is 10% of the US economy. Well done Stephen Harper. Meanwhile Harper’s $85 billion deficit budget is only going to produce a mere 189,000 new jobs?

By that did Harper mean 189,000 net new jobs? If so, the number of jobs that his Home Depot stimulus package will have to produce has now increased to 318,000 new jobs.


Meanwhile news organizations like the Calgary Herald endorsed Stephen Harper as Prime Minister on the basis that:

“Thus, the choice is simple. The Calgary Herald endorses Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservatives. They deserve to be re-elected based on their record, competence, and on the prime minister's steady hand as Canada heads into uncharted, choppy economic waters.”

Choppy is an understatement, whereas competence is a gross overstatement:


Canada’s Employers Cut Record 129,000 Jobs in January
By Theophilos Argitis February 6, 2009
(Bloomberg) -- Canada lost a record number of jobs in January, pushing the unemployment rate to a four-year high of 7.2 percent, as companies struggle to cope with the country’s first recession since 1992.


U.S. employers cut 598,000 jobs in January
Friday, February 6, 2009
CBC News
The U.S. economy lost 598,000 jobs last month — the biggest one-month drop since 1974 — as the jobless rate climbed to 7.6 per cent.