Two issues dominate Canadian politics. One is talked about. The other is not.

The one talked about is terrorism. It is the topic of the day.

Politicians furiously debate the government’s new anti-terror bill. Does it go too far? Would it do any good if passed?

Or, perversely, would it make matters worse?

The issue that is not much talked about any more — at least by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government — is the economy.

At a fundamental level, the economy is failing. Any number of studies point to this fact. The latest was released this week by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.

It says the quality of work in Canada, as measured by wages and job security, has fallen to a 25-year low.

More and more people are trapped in low-paying jobs. More and more are contract workers deemed to be self-employed.

Wage growth for those who already earn good salaries is high. Wage growth for those who earn little is low.

The study says the reasons for this decline are so deeply embedded in the structure of the globalized economy that they will be difficult to reverse.

This picture, of Canadians doomed to live in a world of precarious work, is deeply depressing. It is also a picture that affects far more people than terrorism ever would.

Terrorists killed two people in this country last year. As others have pointed out, lightning routinely kills more — between nine and 10 annually.

Yet terror is what we talk about.

Exactly why is unclear. Terrorism is not new.

In the 1960s, Quebec terrorists set off bombs that killed six and injured dozens. In 1970, they kidnapped a British diplomat and killed a Quebec cabinet minister.

In 1985, Sikh terrorists blew up an aircraft flying from Toronto to India, killing 329.

Some countries, particularly in Africa, have suffered terrorism for decades.

Some governments deliberately terrorize their own people.

Yet, strangely, we treat terrorism — particularly Islamic terrorism — as a phenomenon that is both new and uniquely threatening.

Justin Bourque, the man who killed three Mounties in Moncton last year in the hope of starting a rebellion is treated as a ho-hum, multiple murderer.

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But Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, who killed one soldier last fall to protest Canada’s military intervention in Muslim lands, is accorded the far more dangerous status of terrorist.

At a Commons committee Friday, MPs spent an hour trying to determine from RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson whether Zehaf-Bibeau acted alone when he stormed Parliament (answer: probably), whether he was radicalized by someone else (answer: maybe) and whether the measures envisioned in the government’s new anti-terror bill would have made it easier to nab him ahead of time (answer: probably not).

All of which is useful information, I suppose. It would have been better had someone stopped Zehaf-Bibeau before his murderous rampage.

Similarly, it would have been better had someone stopped Bourque before he killed.

But sometimes, murder cannot be stopped. Homicide, it seems, is an innate part of the human condition.

By comparison, the economy is an entirely social construct. It can be fixed.

We could, if we wished, lean against the forces of globalization. We could, if we wished, enforce labour standards designed to protect employees.

We could encourage high-wage industries and make it harder for Canadian companies to ship good jobs abroad.

We could create a world where adult children didn’t have to live in their parents’ basements and where all workers had access to real pensions upon retirement.

It would not be easy. But it is possible.

First, though, we’d have to put matters in perspective. Terrorism is important. That’s one reason why Harper and his ministers talk about it.

But it is not as important as they make it out to be. It is not the defining issue of our time.