Harper's Lies & Deceit regarding the Canadian Economy

Stephen Harper is continuously deceiving and lying to Canadians about the state of our economy. Yesterday, Stephen Harper claimed:

There are more people working in Canada today than before the recession, the ONLY advanced country where that is the case.

This sounds all very positive, but, unfortunately, it's far from the truth.

Let's analyse.

Canada's unemployment is up (NOT down).

1) "There are more people working in Canada today than before the recession." That might well be the case, but there are also more Canadians without a job than before the recession. 

You don't believe me? 

Check out this report from our own Stats Canada (9 September 2011), and see the unemployment figure, which I have copied below:

You see? 7.4% of Canadians are unemployed now, while that number was close to 6% before the 2008 recession hit.Harper's "there are more people at work now than before the recession" implies unemployment is down, when in reality  unemployment is up.

But then it get's worse, and Harper moves from implicit deceit to explicitly lying, all in a single sentence (what a craftsman):


2) "Canada is the ONLY advanced country where that is the case" - Really? How about one of Europe's strongest economies, Germany?

Canadas economy performs far worse than Germany's (yes, Germany is an advanced country...) 

Apparently Germany has been doing really well throughout this recession. A simple Google News search shows how Harper is lying through his teeth. On August 31 Bloomberg's BusinessWeek.com reported:

[Germany's] jobless rate held at 7 percent, the lowest since records for a reunified Germany began in 1991.

Yesterday, the same website explains:

German unemployment at a two-decade low of 7 percent may boost household spending and help offset slowing exports.

This information is being backed up by a recent (and highly reliable) report by Germany's own Bundesagentur fur Arbeit (Germany's Federal Employment Agency.) On page 12, figure 6, the "Deutchland" line represents the falling unemployment (Arbeitslose) of all of Germany (copied below):


Germany's current unemployment numbers are far below those right before the recession, so, Harper, isn't it time for an apology to the Canadian people. Apparently not. Today Harper makes the same false claim again. Both times journalists (Gloria Galloway from the G&M, and Mark Kennedy from Post Media News) do not refute the false claims made by our country's Prime Minister. 

MSM journalists are failing us
Personally I don't really blame Stephen Harper for his lies and deceit.Apart from being a heartless asshole, he's just doing his work by playing politics with the facts. What bothers me most is the complacency of the Canadian newspapers, who simply copy and paste whatever comes out of Harper's ass. Journalist are supposed to keep our politicians honest by refuting lies and deceit, so why is it that they aren't doing their homework?

I get the impression that The Globe and Mail, a corporate entity, believes that painting rosy picture of the economy is good for business (and investment), and therefore G&M sides with their corporate advertisers (who, BTW, believe the same thing).NOT refuting Harper's lies is a "cheap" (or sophisticated, depending on one's own bias) way to feed the rosy picture of the economy and keep corporate advertisers happy, without doing the actual lying (Harper lied, G&M just spreads the lies); a win-win for the corporate elite, if you will.


Lame MSM has become mouthpiece for Conservatives and Corporate power
G&M (and Canada's MSM) clearly have become a mouthpiece of the Harper government, and one starts wondering how different such a media/government relationship really is from the one the Russia had some 30 years ago. They equally produce propaganda, journalistic garbage.