Canada’s economy is weak and slowing, well below the 2.5-per-cent growth rate the Bank of Canada says we need. Business investment is flat. Our key manufacturing and construction sectors are anemic. So are exports. Some 1.3 million people are out of work. Households are heavy with debt.

And what has Prime Minister Stephen Harper put in the window for struggling Canadians in the throne speech he hopes will be a springboard to yet another Tory victory in 2015?

That would be a few pocketbook issues such as pick-and-pay cable TV, lower cellphone costs, an end to hidden credit fees, and other small-bore initiatives. Plus the gimmicky promise of balanced federal budgets going forward, complete with an asterisk: conditions permitting.

If this is Harper’s idea of Seizing Canada’s Moment, as the Conservatives ads trumpet, the party is reaching out with an exceedingly weak grip to grasp the future. Its absence of vision is matched only by its lack of ambition.

Consumer-friendly though the throne speech may be, it does little to advance Harper’s core “jobs and the economy” agenda. It will do nothing to tamp down the Senate expenses scandal that has Canadians questioning Harper’s political judgment and basic honesty. Or to defuse criticism of the ill-conceived Canada Job Grant program and Employment Insurance reforms that leave many workers without jobs or benefits.

This government appears to lack the energy to make credible use of a rare fourth consecutive term in office.

Throwing a sop to jobless youth by offering them cheaper roaming rates may help steal a march on the opposition by temporarily positioning the Tories, however improbably, as the party of ordinary folks against big business. But it doesn’t begin to address the economic woes that bedevil the nation.

Canadians are now living with Harper’s small-government, ideology-driven decision to forgo federal revenues currently worth $14 billion a year by cutting the goods and services tax. The Tories have also pared corporate taxes, by about half as much. Having given up more than $20 billion a year in ongoing revenues Ottawa is now cutting spending, trying to eliminate an $18-billion deficit at a time when the economy can ill afford it. It’s a perversely destructive cycle, and there’s no end to it.

Looking forward, the Tories remain obtusely determined to continue to hobble government by freezing the federal operating budget, by embracing the conservative American idea of balanced-budget legislation “during normal economic times” (the only real eye-opener in the speech), and by cutting more spending. This is rich, given that Harper inherited a $13-billion surplus but found himself having to run a massive $55-billion deficit in 2009, the biggest in history, to offset the worst effects of the 2008 financial meltdown. Sheer symbolism aside, the balanced-budget concept is empty. No federal government can bind its successor in this way.

Ultimately this throne speech is more a paean to what the Conservatives have already claimed credit for — chiefly a $3,200 tax break for the average family — than a forward-looking work plan. It gives the Harper government a grab-bag of populist talking points to hurl back at the opposition in the coming months to deflect embarrassing questions about Senate scandals, the sagging economy, botched military procurement, government arrogance and excessive secrecy and other Tory failings.

Apart from pick-and-pay TV, the government had little to offer. A European Union trade deal will “soon” be completed. Ottawa will mark a slew of anniversaries in the run-up to Confederation’s 150th anniversary in 2017. The government will press resource exports. Already-announced infrastructure spending will continue. There will be more tough-on-crime legislation. And safer rail transport. It’s housekeeping, for the most part.

The Harper agenda as outlined in this throne speech is to squeak through a bruising fall session in Parliament, pray for a robust turnaround in the American and world economy, and hope that our own growth picks up, along with the Conservative poll numbers, before the government has to face the voters again.

It’s a political play for time, not a vision for the future.

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