Stephen Harper’s conservative party is portraying itself as the only major political party that can provide steady, responsible economic leadership in these troubled economic times.

But is that really true?

As our southern neighbor’s economy is slowly improving, Canada is flirting with another recession. The Canadian dollar reflects the fact that under Mr. Harper’s leadership, it became a petrocurrency: it is down to 75 US cents to the dollar today, and no improvement is in sight. So in comparison with how well Canada could do, based on the economic performance of the United States (under a Democratic president, no less!) I don’t think Mr. Harper has too many reasons to feel proud.

But wait, Canada is not the US. So how well does Mr. Harper’s government fair against other Canadian governments? Quite miserably, as it turns out.

A study published by the (admittedly left-wing) Web site, progressive-economics.ca, shows just how miserably. In their own words, “For 7 of the 16 indicators, the Harper government ranks last (or tied for last) among the nine postwar Prime Ministers. In 6 more cases, it ranks (or is tied) second-last. Among the remaining 3 indicators, the Harper government never ranks higher than sixth out of nine.”

The full study is available here, and it is an interesting read.

So I think Mr. Harper needs to adopt quite a number of cats to make up for what, by any objective measure, amounts to a serious mismanagement of the Canadian economy.

(average: 9.00 cats out of 9)
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