The war is ramping up. The economy continues to sag.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives hope to ride to electoral victory this fall on the first of these, the war against Islamic State militants in the Middle East.

But the stagnating Canadian economy could confound them.

That the economy is weak is well-known. The plunging price of oil has savaged Alberta and ricocheted across the country.

Nationally, the official unemployment rate was up slightly last month to 6.8 per cent. The real unemployment rate, or what the Canadian Labour Congress calls the underemployment rate, is roughly double that.

Theoretically, the low price of oil should give a boost to Ontario’s manufacturing sector. In practice, that hasn’t happened.

The reason? The slump that began in 2008 was so persistent that much of the province’s manufacturing capacity either shut down or moved away.

As a result, recovery is not just a question of restarting stalled assembly lines. New factories will have to be built, a process that, at the very least, takes time.

More to the point, businesses will not want to expand manufacturing in Ontario until they can be assured there will be a market — somewhere — for their goods.

The U.S. economy is set to grow. For Canada, that’s good news. Most of what we export goes south of the border.

But the overall global economy is weak. Forecasts by the alphabet soup of world agencies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) are all down.

All of this affects Canada. As long as the Chinese aren’t itching to get their hands on Canadian chromite, Ontario’s Ring of Fire mining development north of Thunder Bay will remain still-born.

The slump in world commodity prices is not Harper’s fault. Canadian governments don’t set the world price for oil.

However, the blame for Canada’s economy being so dependent on oil and commodities can, in part, be laid at Ottawa’s feet.

Oil has been this government’s big idea. It gave its full backing to massive pipeline projects such as the Keystone XL or the Northern Gateway in order to get Canadian oil to market.

It gutted environmental regulations in the name of oil. It dragged its feet on climate change so as to not discomfit oil.

Its free trade policies, such as the Canada-European Union pact are not designed to encourage domestic manufacturing. Rather they are aimed at expanding markets for raw materials and semi-processed goods like pork.

To be fair to the Conservatives, it should be noted that neither of the major opposition parties has proposed anything radically different.

Justin Trudeau’s Liberals seem happy with an economy based on the tripod of oil, pipelines and free trade.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Tom Mulcair’s New Democrats have proposed marginal reforms, such as bigger tax breaks for small businesses. But they, too, seem reluctant to move beyond the orthodoxy of markets, free trade and raw materials.

Still, voters don’t usually blame the opposition when the economy goes sour. They blame the government.

No wonder then that Harper wants to keep public attention focused on his war against the Islamic State. No wonder that Finance Minister Joe Oliver keeps postponing his budget. For the Conservatives, this is not a happy time to discuss the economy.

But can a sitting government avoid the topic?

In 1991, then-U.S. president George Bush basked in popular adulation after defeating Iraq in the first Gulf War. A year later he went down to defeat over jobs and wages.

“The economy, stupid,” emerged as the defining phrase of that contest.

Today, most polls show a majority of Canadians support Harper’s decision to battle militants in the Middle East. But most polls also show that most Canadians don’t see this war as particularly important.

An Angus Reid poll this month found that only 16 per cent of those surveyed said the war would be a deciding factor in their vote.

What does register with voters, polls show, are the tried and true issues that always move Canadians.

Health care is one. Jobs and the economy are the others.

Canadians may be intrigued by an air war in a far-off land. But their real concerns are closer to home.

Thomas Walkom’s column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

Read more about: