ROY MacGREGOR
The Globe and Mail
October 4, 2008

KITCHENER -- Hey, Stupid - it's not the environment, though there is a connection.

It's not leadership, though there should be a connection.

It's the economy, Stupid, just as you were told back in 1992 during that nasty Bill Clinton-George H.W. Bush campaign for the U.S. presidency.

Maybe you remember that far back: stock market throwing up on itself, real estate rotting, jobs shaky ...

This Canadian election has, so far, been the most penny (pun intended) dreadful campaign in memory, but there have been signs this week that, finally, one single issue is emerging.

Finally.

You heard hints of it in the two leaders' debates, but it was far more in evidence recently out on King Street, where volunteers from the Ontario Coalition for Social Justice were handing pamphlets out to anyone attending the all-candidates meeting going on in the Canada room of the local daily newspaper.

"Feeling insecure?" the pamphlets asked those who live and will vote in the manufacturing heart of Southwestern Ontario.

"Does Harper really care?"

You could find it upstairs in the Canada room, where the charmer of the evening's event turned out to be - steady now! - running for the Communist Party of Canada, a tiny political movement that wants to nationalize the oil and gas industry, wants a 32-hour work week with no pay cuts - and two years notice required by any business seeking to lay off workers.

When all six candidates - Liberal incumbent, Conservative, NDP, Green, Independent and the Communist - were asked by a member of the audience how voters could have faith that the various promises would be kept, Martin Suter grinned like a Cheshire cat, took a few chews of his gum, and gave an answer that brought down the house:

"Vote for me - and find out."

In some ways, that is what this election is coming down to. Vote - and find out. No wonder there is such nervousness in those parts of Ontario and Quebec where the job losses, so many of them in the auto sector, are mounting by the week. The nearby Toyota plant has decided not to go to a second shift. "Volvo to cut 500 jobs" in nearby Goderich reads a headline on the free copies of the Record being handed out to the 100 or more who have come to this all-candidates' meeting for the riding of Kitchener Centre.

It is October now, the time of Oktoberfest, but the beer has gone rather flat from the optimism and affluence of the past decade and more in this region of so much German heritage.

"There is no doubt," says Liberal Karen Redman, who has held this urban riding for the Liberals since 1997, "there is real pain in this community."

NDP candidate Oscar (Oz) Cole-Arnal, a Lutheran minister with a dash of fire-and-brimstone to his delivery, says Canadian job losses - "55,200 lost in July alone" - have been particularly "devastating" to the blue-collar Canadians he hopes to represent.

Tory candidate Stephen Woodworth, a mild-mannered lawyer, isn't even the incumbent, yet he gets all the heckling. He is blamed for failing to act on native land claims, for failing in Afghanistan, for doing nothing about the economy.

As the evening goes on, the election itself seems to evolve into that one outstanding issue. Cheryl Yan, a 27-year-old recent graduate of nearby University of Guelph, asks the final question of the night. What are they going to do about the economy?

Woodworth, speaking for Stephen Harper's Conservatives, acts as if everything that needs to be done is being done, that the economy is in good hands and requires little touch.

Redman, on the other hand, says, "There is a role for government" in hard times - a point echoed by all other candidates, including the grinning Communist candidate, who says that role should include a guaranteed annual income.

Clearly flustered at one point, the Conservative candidate says it only stands to reason that the economy would be at the top of people's minds now - "As Don Cherry might have said, 'It's not rocket surgery, is it?' "

Yan listens politely to all the answers but is hardly assured. She may have a freshly minted master's degree in hand, but that is not all that describes her.

"I'm unemployed," she says.

A couple of weeks back in Toronto, former Liberal minister Ken Dryden gave a speech in which he brilliantly tagged this irritating election as Stephen Harper's "Seinfeld campaign."

Up until this week, it had indeed been about nothing.

The only difference between it and Seinfeld was the Canadian general election of 2008 lacked a laugh track.

"This campaign is not about Mr. Harper," a frustrated Dryden said. "It is not about him ... This is a campaign about BIG, IMPORTANT things."

It is now. It is a campaign caught in a whirlwind of financial confusion.

Where every single candidate could say, as Martin Suter so succinctly put it:

"Vote for me - and find out."