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How much of the economic news can fairly be attributed to the government of the day is open to question. The drop in child poverty is almost certainly related to the enriched Canada Child Benefit the Liberals brought in early in their tenure. As for the rest, well, the best you can say is they didn’t actually prevent it.

But as opposition critics are quick to blame every bit of bad economic news on the government, so by the rules of the political game the government gets to claim credit when times are good. Mind you, all of this good economic news has not stopped the Liberals from falling 20 points in the polls over the last two and a half years.

But give it time. By October memories of the SCN-Lavalin affair, which killed off a nascent Liberal recovery, will presumably have faded. At some point you have to think the economy will start to weigh in their favour. Only twice in our history have one-term majority governments been defeated, in 1878 and 1935. In both years, significantly, the economy was in depression.

What’s an opposition leader to do in the face of such rotten (from his perspective) luck? In his recent “vision” speech on the economy, Andrew Scheer attempted to argue the economy was not in as good shape as the facts would suggest, appealing instead to how Canadians “feel” about it. “The economic indicators might say one thing,” he told his Toronto audience, “but the human indicators,” by which he appeared to mean polls, “say something entirely different.”