Don’t look now, but the leaders of Canada’s major federal parties are preparing to debate each other on — what else? — the economy Thursday evening.
Technically only Conservative leader Stephen Harper, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau and NDP leader Tom Mulcair were invited to the debate. But Green Party leader Elizabeth May plans to make herself heard — as virtually all the candidates, parties and their supporters have so far, throughout the campaign — via Twitter.
Election cheat sheet: What you need to know as leaders trade jabs on the economy
A quick primer on what you should keep in mind as the candidates go at each other:
A tiny recession, a teensy surplus — but size isn’t everything, right?
You say “recession,” I say “80 per cent of the economy is actually growing.”
So what’s the deal?
Yes, Canada was in a recession earlier this year, when the country’s gross domestic product shrank for two fiscal quarters (six months) in a row.
Conservative leader Stephen Harper prefaced many of his responses to recession-related questions with the proviso that “80 per cent of the economy is actually growing.”
That isn’t entirely accurate. But this recession was pretty tiny, as recessions go — certainly nothing close to the so-called “Great Recession” following the 2008-09 financial crisis.
BMO’s chief economist Doug Porter has a much rosier name for it: “Best. Recession. Ever.”
In the meantime, the federal government posted a small but politically significant surplus of $1.9 billion. (It sounds like a big number, but it’s less than two-thirds of one per cent of Canada’s $300-billion budget.)
The in-the-black balance sheet is thanks to a combination of higher-than-expected tax revenue and lower-than-expected expenditures. What departments spent less money to help boost that surplus? We don’t know yet.
Duelling spending plans
The parties were already taking shots at each others’ financial records well before Thursday’s debate, as Harper seeks to burnish his economic bona fides and both Mulcair and Trudeau style themselves as the most credible alternative.
To help you sort through it all:
Adding up the Liberals’ campaign promises
3 charts explaining how the NDP plans to balance the budget
Liberals cast doubt on whether NDP candidate can balance a budget
NDP delivers pre-emptive strike against Liberals before economic debate
‘Exporting jobs’: Not really a thing
NDP leader Tom Mulcair and, to a lesser degree, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau have criticized the export focus of Canada’s resource industry for exporting raw materials instead of refining or processing them here in so-called “value-added” sectors.
In the last economic debate, Mulcair slammed TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline for exporting jobs that should go to Canadians.
But that’s not really how jobs or exports work.
“The meaning of the phrase ‘value-added’ has been so widely misunderstood and distorted we would all be better off if it were struck from the political rhetoric and public debate entirely,” the University of Calgary’s Trevor Tombe wrote in a paper this year.
PIPELINE POLITICS: What you need to know about oilsands and the election
‘Creating’ jobs: More complicated than you think
It’s become a political truism that every candidate will promise to create — or congratulate him- or herself for having created — zillions of jobs.
And this campaign is no different. We’ve heard the phrases “job-killing tax,” “worst job-creation record since the Second World War,” “to create XXXX jobs” umpteen times in the past several weeks.
But the truth is, it’s not that simple: There’s a multitude of factors at play when it comes to who fires, who hires and the kinds of jobs they hire people to do.
That’s influenced by government policy, of course, but also by factors (such as consumer spending habits, the loonie’s value, other countries’ policies) completely outside their control.
READ MORE: Okay, can politicians really create jobs?
READ MORE: Ontario gave 109 companies $765M over 8 years. So where are the jobs?
Did we mention the middle class?
If this were a drinking game, the phrase “middle class” would be your cue to chug your drink, then escape into an alternate dimension.
Everyone courts the middle class. Everyone thinks they’re in the middle class.
What does “middle class” actually mean?
Nobody knows.
Shhhhh.
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