Sure, Michael Ignatieff whipped up election panic this week over Stephen Harper’s accountability summary, but let’s be clear: the Tories and Liberals get nothing but failing grades on their report cards.

The exam is on the economy, and they are both way off the mark.

They’d better bone up, because like it or not, we are in a transformational time. For god’s sake – we just acquired a 12 per cent ownership stake in General Motors and paid inconceivably big money for it. Why? Head-in-the-sand denial of new realities and lack of innovation did in the industry.

All the indicators are pointing in a new direction. But, no, Ignatieff and Harper are like a pair of old-school auto execs. If they don’t take off their blinders and hop on the innovation bandwagon, we’ll soon be even further up shit creek without a bailout.

What’s wrong with this picture? The GM deal has left a lot of us scratching our heads in wonder at the power of the auto industry to garner billions in government support while the rest of us are stuck mostly going it alone, mano-?a-?mano with the recession.

But is it possible that the GM bail-?out is a case of real-?life experience that has gone so far off the rails that it’s actually nudging us toward an entirely new paradigm?

Capitalism has most certainly driven itself way beyond its own comfort zone. There is no map yet for the road ahead.

It’s been a bad political week for the tar sands. Publicly, the Tories are still clinging to the cupid face they pulled on when U.S. President Barack Obama touched down in Ottawa this winter, but they’ve just pulled out the big, fat arrows and are aiming low.

As U.S. climate initiatives rev into real action, it shamefully ain’t our love that we Canucks are sending stateside.

On Tuesday, May 19, Obama announced historic new rules for reducing auto emissions that will meet the stringent standard set by California’s low-carbon fuel regulations. The nationwide standard will take effect in 2012 and is expected to produce a 40 per cent cleaner and more fuel-efficient car and truck fleet in the U.S., averaging 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016.

Canadians are taking the recession into our own hands, and we have the employment numbers to prove it. Have we hit bottom? Not necessarily, but, hey, we the people aren’t using this time of economic stagnation to stand still and do nothing.

That’s the poetry of the new job numbers for April that came out last week.

The surprising tally shows that instead of declining, the number of jobs rose by 35,900 last month, despite constant news of layoffs both threatened and real.

The high drama in the auto sector keeps speeding along on a mind-bending course.

Due to just-announced concessions from U.S. banks and bond-holders, it appears at press time that both Chrysler and GM will avert bankruptcy though radically reduced job and projected sales numbers, and U.S. auto workers will be their new controlling shareholders.

Chrysler could be 55 per cent worker-owned and GM 39 per cent. That’s a major milestone.

While the Canadian government watches closely and is careful not to rule out taking equity in GM itself, many voices are predicting only looming failure for companies moving so beyond the pale of private enterprise.

The restructured auto companies do have just about everything going against them, including the long-term drop in market demand, plus pending green regulations requiring retooling for fuel-efficient small cars (which already have the lowest profit margins). Oy. It’s a nightmare.

It’s auto showdown time.

As the April 30 deadline nears, we’re entering the final week of negotiations between Chrysler and its union. GM is close behind with its June 1 drop-dead date. (Sorry the term is so applicable.)

As he sits at that negotiating table, CAW head Ken Lewenza faces a nightmare-scape filled with different ways to lose. What’s a union leader to do?

Unfair as it may be, it’s a dark road ahead, and sacrifices are going to be made. What are the offsetting gains that might come with them and sustain the best outcome for auto workers and Ontario taxpayers called upon to be generous in their support?

I’m hoping both union leaders and CAW members will be employing some new thinking as they truck on through the political and economic minefield ahead. If they are, they’ll be saints in a land of sinners, because the other sides are offering up the opposite of a new perspective.

London, England – I am at the cavernous Excel Centre in the outskirts of Canary Wharf with a press corps of thousands (but only 28 from Canada) who, like me, have gone through an inscrutable two-bus switch and security process to get here April 2.

But for hours, a small spate of press conferences and a few carefully managed photo ops are really all there is to feed actual news appetites. So we’re all munching on free sandwiches and pounding out stories and broadcasts about... well, mainly we’re guessing what the story will be once the final G20 communiqué’s out.

By the end of the day, it’s such a hype-fest that Brit PM Gordon Brown’s enthusiastic rundown of final agreements – on everything from reforming the global banking sector, controlling shadow banking, hedge funds, credit rating agencies and CEO compensation to kick-starting fair and sustainable international trade – has the bullshit detectors beeping pretty loud.