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This gimmicky sales pitch looks like a key part of the Conservative plan to win the votes of the moms and dads cashing the cheques.

Stephen Harper needs to wring every bit of political benefit out of this tax cut, which was obviously designed to deliver benefits to a key electoral demographic in the seats around Toronto and similar suburbs across the country.

The other big tax breaks in the budget went to seniors, who are also a key part of the Conservatives’ potential winning coalition.

But the old cheque–in-the-mailbox trick does not guarantee re-election. The Conservatives must convince moms and dads that they’re doing a good job managing the economy.

Harper took credit for Canada’s economic resilience in 2008, which was almost entirely the doing of the previous Liberal government, which resisted calls to deregulate the banks.

Now it looks like he has to take the blame for something that isn’t really his fault — the fall in oil prices, which seems to have our economy in a shallow recession.

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He doesn’t want to take the blame. Finance Minister Joe Oliver, for instance, wouldn’t admit the facts last week.

But in Pickering on Saturday, Harper finally acknowledged that Canada is in a “downturn,” blaming it on “the downturn in the global economy,” whatever that means, and promising to provide “strong fiscal discipline,” which means not borrowing to stimulate the economy.

That’s why on Sunday, Poilievre was portraying the tax cheques as stimulus.