We'll be OK

If there is ever a moment for Harper to shine, it's now. The nerd of Parliament Hill needs to save the Canadian economy -- at least that's what the people are saying. What people really mean is that they want the government to act like they're doing something. Consumer confidence is down. Pessimism is hard to combat with the constant bombardment of financial and economic bad news from the US. We need a little bit of optimism. We're in a recession, but our financial systems are not busting at the seams the way it is in the US. We were never as adventurous as the US. We're Canadians -- we're boring. We were prudent with our regulations, cautious with our investments and not harebrained. Have we lost jobs? Yup. Are we going to lose more? Probably. But it's not going to last. We will not dip as low as the US. We will not scrape bottom. We will recover faster than the US. And right now, we need the government to help us believe that this will be the case in their words and actions, so it becomes self-fulfilling. [See Canada's economic and financial data at Statistics Canada, and Canadian economy stats at NationMaster..]