Joe Oliver and the Ghastly Cinderella Budget Show

Well let's put it this way, his PMO handlers did their best to turn it into a glamorous photo-op, but it wasn't exactly Cinderella slipping on her dainty glass slipper.

And it wasn't pretty.

It was just Ol' Joe Oliver, pulling on his new pair of Made in America, New Balance running shoes with Con blue laces. 

But as bizarre as that spectacle was, it did mark the beginning of Stephen Harper's final push for another bloody majority. 

The symbolism of Finance Minister Joe Oliver donning a pair of Tory blue sneakers Monday for the traditional new-budget-shoes photo opportunity shouldn't be lost on anyone. 

A federal election date may yet be six months away, but Tuesday's promised delivery of the Harper government's first balanced spending blueprint in eight years means the Conservatives are already off and running.

We are about to be hit by a barrage of Con propaganda like this country has never seen before.

Between Tuesday's budget launch and those well-timed, mid-summer family cheques there will be an orgy of government self-promotion, with $7.5 million already earmarked for "economic action plan" advertising. 

These large set pieces of the Conservative re-election campaign will be augmented Tuesday with a host of smaller measures aimed up shoring up perceived weaknesses and bolstering perceived strengths.

And it will be a hog fest of epic proportions...



As the Cons try to buy Canadians with their own money, and brainwash them into believing that they know what they're doing, and that Stephen Harper is a Great Economist Leader.

When in fact his economic record is so bad that only Duffy's make up artist can save it...



Or NOT.

Not when he put all our economic eggs in one oily basket with disastrous results...



And not when all his brutish austerity policies have done is condemn us to mediocrity.

The IMF has a message the finance minister doesn’t want to hear: unless you are broke, you should be using fiscal policy to generate economic growth.

Oliver is actively ignoring Lagarde and the best thinking of the world-class economists she employs. He has made clear that the budget he presents in Parliament on Tuesday will be written in black ink. By doing so, he will be condemning Canada to economic mediocrity. 

But then the Cons are hoping that their giant propaganda machine can turn the ugly truth on its head.

And that they can bribe and fool enough greedy and/or dumb Canadians into believing that only they can save us from disaster...



When in fact Harper and his monstrous Cons are the disaster that is killing this country.

And the good news? 

As Chantale Hébert points out, even a basket or a trough full of budget goodies can't guarantee Harper's re-election. 

If popular budget measures could guarantee the re-election of a three-term government, Paul Martin would have won the 2006 election.

But by the time Canada went to the polls eight months after the spring budget there was little left of the electoral good will it could have inspired.

It didn't work for Paul Martin and his Liberals and for the same or even better reasons it almost certainly won't work for Harper and his Cons.

As the Harper government delivers its last budget before seeking a fourth mandate, it is facing many of the same challenges that Martin failed to overcome in the 2006 election . . . and then some. That starts with fatigue with the prime minister.

Not when so many Canadians are so sick and tired of him and his grubby regime.

Because just like the Cons can't put enough mascara on their economic record to disguise how disastrous it has been.

They can't put enough lipstick on their Great Leader...



`To disguise his criminal incompetence, his lack of imagination, and dispel the feeling that he's been around for too long, and he's really good to go. 

So if the opposition parties can come up with a more inspiring economic vision, along with a vision of a better Canada, which shouldn't be THAT hard.

All the propaganda in the world will not save him.

His tinny Cinderella coach will be exposed as a pumpkin...



And the economy that he once thought would lead to his coronation.

Will instead help bury him...

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