The Conservative Economic Record

Sept 2012: Unemployment is up at 7.4%; it has been increasing since June while American unemployment has only gone down.

July 2012: Worst trade deficit ever in Canadian history at $2.3 billion.

2012: GDP growth rate is declining (PDF pg 22). Canada is no longer the fastest growing economy in the G7; it is now behind America and Japan, as well as other more comparable resource-based economies like Australia and Norway.

2007-2012: Growing debt-to-GDP ratio, now at 85%. Since 1996 Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio had been decreasing from a dangerously high 102% to an eventual low of 66% in 2007; it has been rising ever since and is currently at 85%.

2012:  Highest level of personal debt in Canadian history; reducing the GST by 2% was partially responsible.

2012: Largest government annual expenditures at $733 billion in 2011.

2002-Present: Declining productivity. OECD: "Canada’s overall productivity has actually fallen since 2002, while it has grown by about 30% over the past 20 years in the United States"

2010: Largest deficit in Canadian history at $55.6 billion.

Late 2000s: Highest level of inequality in decades. OECD shows latest Gini coefficient (after taxes and transfers) at 0.324 to be the highest in Canada since before the mid-1970s.