What Harper should say about the economy: “no comment”

Sometime you can’t win for losing. In Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s case, he can’t even win for proroguing. In a television interview on Monday, Harper made a lot of negative comments about the current state of the economy. He said that he was “very worried” about it and that he had never seen such economic uncertainty.

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Harper also said that we might in fact be headed for another depression. It comes as no surprise that the PM was immediately castigated by the usual sources, mainly Liberals, for making such a negative prognosis of the state of Canada’s economy. According to the critics Harper showed a complete lack of leadership by expressing those negative opinions. A real leader, they say, would show strength by making positive comments (or at least refrain from negativity) so as not to worry people by showing that the head of the government is worried. The effect of these negative comments would shake the confidence of Canadian consumers, exacerbating an already dire situation. There is some truth to the notion that negative opinions emanating from the government can trickle down to ordinary people and in so doing, send the economy into a further downward spiral. This criticism would be justified and at least somewhat believable if Harper had not been just as severely criticized for earlier comments that were deemed to be too optimistic. After the markets began to fall in mid September, Harper insisted that Canada would not sink into a recession and that the fundamentals of the Canadian economy were sound. He pointed out that international organizations had rated Canada’s banking system near the top and argued that we would not face the same crisis that the United States and other countries were facing. And, he said that Canada would not go into a deficit situation. His most inflammatory statement was, when asked specifically about the stock market, that there were some good buying opportunities to be had. So Harper has been equally criticized for being overly optimistic and overly pessimistic. You could easily get the impression that there are a lot of people out there who simply don’t like Stephen Harper no matter what he says. And of course, you would be right. The truth is that it is highly unlikely that the negative comments that were made by the prime minister will have any effect at all. This is not the case where things appear to be okay and Harper had made statements that purported to predict a future downturn. As the markets and consumer confidence are in large part psychological, comments made in that context would undoubtedly cause markets to fall and consumer spending to shrink. But we (Canada and the rest of the world) are already in a bad economic situation and the comments that Harper made last Monday simply reflect what everyone knows; we are in a great period of uncertainty and yes, there is a possibility of another depression. But the criticism makes a good sound bite for those who feel that Stephen Harper’s rightful place in the world should be as leader of the Official Opposition. No matter what Harper says or doesn’t say will draw criticism from those Canadians who are upset that we are not currently being governed by the Coalition of the Chilling. As for Harper; the next time he’s asked a question on the economy, he should just answer “no comment”. Of course he will be criticized for that too.

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