A PITBULL WITH LIPSTICK

I've always said that if a pollster told Harper that Canadians didn't like seniors that the next day you'd see him cutting his grandmother free on an ice flow.

We had 12 years of Martin-economics during which the US went into a recession following 9/11 that we did not follow because our economic house was in order. Nor did we slip into recession when the softwood lumber issue drained 5 billion from our economy; or when SARS shut down the Ontario film industry; or when forest fires wiped out huge swaths of BC; the list goes on and we weathered each.

Not because we followed the US, not because we waited until we saw where they were going and then made up plans, but because the steady hand at the wheel of our economy had a solid understanding of risk and knew if we remained prudent and conservative with our finances we could steer our own course.

Its small surprise then that the party called Conservative has spent the most, cut $9 billion a year in revenue removing any hedge room and put our economy at risk just ahead of an economic downturn even a 5 year old could see coming (I traveled through the US in April 08 and you could see most areas were already in a recession then).

This failed version of the Conservative experiment is already past its best before date and all we're going to see in this budget is too little, too late pseudo-populist half-economics trotted out just ahead of another Conservative radio ad blitz designed to sell Canadians another pitbull with lipstick.

We can't afford another 300+ million dollar election but it's long past time for change. And as the only way the Liberals were going to govern in the last election was through a coalition I put to you that every vote for the Liberals and NDP was a vote for a coalition.

Either way the majority must rule and the current majority in the House is not represented by Mr. Harper.