Apparently Harper doesn't read his own governments economic reports

Harper was in London yesterday toting all that he has done for Ontario manufacturing and telling us how his government prudently managed the economy through the recessive threats of the US meltdown.

"The hard-working people of this region want to know this government is on their side," he told about 1,000 enthusiastic supporters at the London Convention Centre.

"And between now and Oct. 14, they will choose between the certainty a Conservative government provides and the risk represented by the Liberals, Green Party and the NDP." Harper said.

"My own belief is if we were going to have some kind of crash or recession, we probably would have had it by now a year into the (financial) crisis."

In reality his government has sat on the sidelines during his stewardship as Canadian manufacturing has been decimated by the combination of a rising Canadian dollar that has decreased revenues and lowered exports of our manufactured goods and services and the high cost of oil which has raised production costs for this already weakened sector.

Harper’s focus has been on the exploitation of resources, predominantly oil.

While the auto industry was announcing their shutdown of Canadian plants, his finance minister was busy attacking the Ontario government for being bad place for investment.

Instead of supporting the Ontario government’s search for new manufacturing facilities from Toyota and other auto makers, Harper’s, then Minister of Trade, Emerson was in Europe telling the world that Canada ’s north was opening up for oil development.

And when Harper’s government finally did act just prior to calling the election, it was too little, too late with investments in upgrading two Ontario auto parts plants.

Meanwhile Harper’s claim that the he has managed us through the worst of it, contradicts the report from his own leading economic agency released back in July.

The EDC (Export Development Canada) released it’s report in July predicting the price of a barrel of oil to decline to under $100 by year end and drop to $84 next year.

Although they also predicted that the Canadian dollar will drop to below 90 US which will help the manufacturing sectors of Ontario and Quebec we would not see a turn around in those sectors until 2010.

Next year, 2009, will be hard for both the manufacturing and resource sectors of the economy in Canada.

Harper’s short sightedness in only focussing on one segment of our economy is going to come back to bite us all in the ass next year.

Harper has done a good job of managing Alberta’s economy through the boom.

Unfortunately he just hasn’t done so much for the rest of us.

Reference: Harper in London from CNEWS here.