A smart and compassionate friend of mine recently told me that while he couldn\u2019t stomach Stephen Harper \u2013 given Harper\u2019s manifest disrespect for democratic institutions, the unseemly behaviour of the Prime Minister\u2019s Office under his command, his coldness in the face of the Syrian refugee crisis, and so on \u2013 my friend\u00a0was too concerned about the economy to bring himself to vote for either Justin Trudeau or Tom Mulcair. Neither man, according to my friend, could really be trusted with the Canadian economy. To start with, neither can claim a track record in this regard, and the stakes are high. My friend is clearly not alone in this worry. And so many voters will see this as a one-issue election, and will feel that the one issue that matters is the economy.<\/p>\n
But I think this is a grave mistake, for two reasons. First, it\u2019s a mistake because it puts overriding value on one factor, one value, when there are others at stake. And secondly it\u2019s a mistake because that one factor \u2013 the economy \u2013 is one the significance of which is easy to overestimate in this context. Let\u2019s look at those two problems in reverse order.<\/p>\n
First, it is a mistake to focus exclusively on the economy because it\u2019s a mistake to overestimate the impact that a prime minister has on the economy. The identity of the prime minister simply isn\u2019t a make-or-break issue as far as our prosperity is concerned. For one thing, none of the leaders currently vying for the job has suggested he will, if elected, make any dramatic moves, from an economic point of view. And each of them would, when serving as prime minister, be the recipient of sober, expert advice from the relevant civil servants and economists. And each of them knows that getting elected next<\/em> time requires that they not do anything foolish, anything too dramatic.<\/p>\n It is true, of course, that the PM has his hands on some meaningful economic levers, at least indirectly. The prime minister, through his dominant role in parliament, gets to raise or lower key taxes. He gets to appoint the Finance Minister, who in turn gets to appoint the Governor of the Bank of Canada. But the changes any prime minister might make through these mechanisms are small, and in the short or medium run, an economy the size and complexity of Canada\u2019s simply isn\u2019t that sensitive to small changes of those sorts.<\/p>\n Add to that the fact that the differences between the three main parties, in terms of economic policy, are actually pretty small \u2013 intending a few percentage points cut from or added to this tax or that, a slight difference in total federal spending. The fact is that all three of Canada\u2019s mainstream federal parties are more or less centrist, from an economic point of view.<\/p>\n