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This smacks of Animal Farm — “four legs good, two legs bad.” Big business is pilloried, while small business revered. Apart from being an incentive to stay small, it defies progressivity in taxation. Businesses are not people and there are clearly many very wealthy people who run small businesses, and who will be made all the more wealthy by the NDP proposal.

Still, we are in an election year and that means there is no room for nuance. The opposition tells the middle class — everyone in Canada who’s not in jail, and whose surname is not Thomson, Weston, Irving, Desmarais and McCain — that the country is going to hell in a hand cart. The government, for its part, claims Canadians have never had it so good.

Small wonder voters have whiplash. They feel better off, thanks to cuts at the pumps and low interest rates, but they keep hearing how bad things are going to get because of the plunge in oil prices.

Nanos Research has tracked this phenomenon in two separate indexes that are at odds with one another — the pocketbook index that measures personal finances and job security, which is at a record high; and the expectations index, which looks at the economic outlook and is plunging.

“The tracking suggests consumers are currently cross-pressured,” said Nik Nanos.

We are in an election year and that means no room for nuance

The confused voter can scarcely rely on the politicians for objective analysis but, fortunately for them, the Parliamentary Budget Officer released a report Tuesday looking at the true cost to government of the oil price fall. The report suggests much of the panic has been overdone — even in the worst case scenario, the Conservatives would be within $400-million of balancing the books next year, on a budget of $279-billion.