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.

Did you know that this crisis “will fundamentally alter the nature of capitalism’’? Hey. Those aren’t my words. They’re those of David Dodge, former Bank of Canada governor, who said this mouthful and more over the last week. And he should know.

He’s one of the people doing the reinventing. In fact, he’s just become co-chair of one of the planet’s most high-powered committees to change the world, struck by the modestly named Institute of International Finance, but don’t be fooled. Members include most of the globe’s largest commercial and investment banks, and they pride themselves on their unmatched international political pull.

As we head to a momentous G20 Summit next Thursday, April 2, these financial foxes are going to have a lot of say about how the banking hen house gets rebuilt. Cynicism is definitely called for. But it is one of the many paradoxes of our time that the ethical and financial fissures exposed by the meltdown and the implications of trooping out the tax-payers to fix it up are bringing some of capitalism’s best minds into a surprisingly pro-social stance.

Like Obama, I feel the anger choking my throat, only it’s Chrysler’s latest that has me fuming here in Canada. The old-style auto industry is on a highway to hell, and it’s taking us down with it, one way or another.

While a lot of people would like to pin the blame on auto workers’ wages or pensions (or both), the price point of American cars isn’t really the main business issue the companies face.

The facts are that the drop in demand isn’t going away, the companies haven’t kept up, the market is over-saturated, and we aren’t impressed with the cars. The recession has made it worse, but it’s largely bad management that’s created an unsustainable auto sector.

The tar and Canada’s line in the sands have exploded this week in an uncanny combination of hugely high-profile political and economic events on both sides of the border.

So far on the energy scorecard, it looks like the U.S. is batting 1,000, Canada near zero. And sadly or happily, that’s a very, very good thing.

With the new political reality south of the border rocking out so fast, it’s hard to keep tabs. The latest and greatest is Obama’s cap-and-trade budget, sent to Congress late last week.

Sure sounds exhilarating from up here, promising – among equally brave actions on taxes, health care and education – to raise $15 billion a year over 10 years from capping carbon emissions and auctioning credits. The money will be used to develop technologies such as wind and solar power, build energy-efficient cars and trucks and give individuals incentives to reduce carbon use.

Ontario’s new Green Energy Act could take the province to the front of the green energy line, or become window dressing for more old-?school centralized nuclear power plans.

Ever since Ontario committed to end its coal-fired dependence in 2003, two energy paradigms have been duking it out on an epic battleground littered with geeky graphs, warring calculations and out-of-sight European case studies. The next round will affect us all for generations to come, both through our pocketbooks and the environment.

First the great news.
The new act, announced by Energy Minister George Smitherman on Monday, February 23, marks a stunning victory for the idea of decentralized distributed energy production and the possibilities that efficiency can bring. It displays an admirable depth of thinking about eliminating obstacles currently in place and promotes many of the key practices needed to clear the way for clean energy.

What do we do now that money no longer makes the world go round?
While many are fearing pink slips, dealing with thinning resources or adjusting to other insecurities of the moment, it seems strange to be talking about upsides to the hard times. But, believe it or not, there are a few. Here are 10 of the positives of living through this money meltdown:

1. LESS PRESSURE ON THE NATURAL WORLD
We may be hurtin’, but Mother Nature is definitely better off, at least for now. Take the oil patch. Even before plunging global demand depressed oil prices, the financial melt-down had dried up billions in new investment dollars slated for the tar sands. It’s ironic that while the boreal forest is getting a bit of a break, so are we. Less price pressure at the gas pump has made life a little easier for a lot of people. Who ever thought those two things could happen at the same time?

2. LESS DEVELOPMENT PRESSURE ON CITIES
The credit crunch is good news for city-lovers facing gentrification. Housing mayhem has taken its toll on the condo boom as stalled financing accomplishes what the grassroots and city planners could not. And there’s a fair possibility that by the time this downturn is over, building standards will ensure that new developments are constructed with energy efficiency and environmental impact in mind. Yes, we’re losing construction jobs, but we need to employ these folks to do infrastructure and green retrofits, right?

Washington, DC – To call it good timing is perhaps an understatement.

I’m in Washington at the Good Jobs, Green Jobs Conference (February 4-6), and it’s a sellout crowd of 2,500 enviro experts, green business people, justice activists, a ton of trade unionists and, yes, community organizers.

They are revelling in the power of their new place in the political matrix of a country that is both forced into and blessed with the job of reinventing itself.

Crisis and renewal are a heady combo, and the Marriott Wardman Park ballroom is supercharged. It’s just the second-ever major gathering of this new Blue Green Alliance, but there is swagger in its step. The lineup of governors, senators and newly appointed high-placed officials here is just one sign that the Obama admin values the friendship.

“Green jobs are no longer a concept,” says Lisa Jackson, new African-American head of the Environmental Protection Agency and eco super-star. “They are very much a reality. Green jobs are a driving engine for recovery.” Talk about regime change.

It feels like crazy good karma that the conference is taking place while at this very moment, just blocks away in the Capitol Building, the Senate is working its way toward passing the sweeping new stimulus plan.

This assembly has already spent a day strutting its new green jobs partnership through the Hill to support the Obama plan, which will fund enviro energy infrastructure, energy efficiency for government buildings and those with low incomes, and the science and technology education a green shift requires.

The budget we were handed on Tuesday is a scattershot affair, forged by a government desperate to cling to power. It offers no vision of how Canada can find its feet in the 21st- century realities taking shape south of the border and around the world.

The Conservatives reversed everything they’ve stood for to ensure bulletproof political passage of their plan. Michael Ignatieff has taken coalition government off the table but threatened the Conservatives with further fire with his amendment demanding repeated confidence motions in the House in March, June and December. We are back to the usual intra-party head-butting. The NDP calls the amendment a cover for one more Liberal vote of confidence in Harper, and the Bloc says the motion means nothing. Still, Ignatieff has probably judged the mood of the country correctly in this winter of recession, given the goody bag the coalition has forced from Flaherty.

Though it will pass for now, the Opposition will need to watch the spending on the budgeted items like a hawk to see what actually comes of all that’s been promised.

Let’s pray Tuesday (January 27) doesn’t ruin the inauguration glow. That’s when our government introduces its budget. Just days after Barack Obama is sworn in, Canada is bizarrely headed for one of the most unprecedented moments in our own political history.

I think one word sums up this phenomenon: “opportunity.”

But first, let’s acknowledge that this continental syncopation is TV-worthy stuff. We had parallel elections, even to the point of duelling television debates. Now, after Obama has promised to usher in a new age, we are at the crossroads.

Our political leaders have to decide whether to fall in step with the world’s largest economy and look to a new climate-aware green-energy future or throw their weight behind saving the sinking, nature-blind, tar-sands-fuelled same old same old.

It’s been an emotional ride so far: the election itself, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s almost psychopathically unhinged economic statement, the surprise coalition agreement, the near-feudal prorogue and then a new Liberal leader, holiday silence and what has seemed like a big swing of the pendulum back to the status quo.

Have you seen the TV ads?

Just days away from introducing a huge deficit-?financed stimulus package to foster spending, our government is spending millions on commercials for a new program promoting citizen saving.

Add self-destructive to our other major economic woes.

I’m referring to the new tax-free savings accounts (TFSA) first announced by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty back in February 2008. The Tories are obviously hoping to bag political credit for this initiative, but by any sane yardstick, the timing of this bonus for the banks should backfire in their faces.

Let me put it starkly: (spending) power to the people. With governments on the verge of a possible $2.8-billion-and-growing handover to the auto sector, it has to be asked: where’s the movement to go Main Street with our money?

The suddenness and scale of the huge auto industry crisis is naturally sowing political and economic confusion. But solutions must pass some reality tests – and there’s a good possibility that we may be watching one of the biggest con-job corporate giveaways ever.

Bottom line: the world is in transformation mode. The car market is not going to return to what it has been. Needs and desires are changing – quickly. But the new products, like electric cars, aren’t yet ready to sell. And so, no matter what, we have a huge unemployment debacle looming, one by no means exclusive to the auto sector.

Bob Rae’s exit from the Liberal leadership race has left his party united and poised to provide a real alternative government in this time of crisis. All of us on the green, centre and left of the political spectrum needed the Liberal party to finally get its act together. Thank you, Bob.

The timing and circumstances are now perfect for a new coalition government to step in come January and deal with the global economic and environmental crisis that job loss figures and accelerated Arctic ice-melt show have now truly hit home.

Only problem now is whether Michael Ignatieff has the political will to rise to the occasion. Here’s a little encouragement for the new Lib leader and our Toronto Liberal caucus: make the smart choice and let the coalition get to work.

The number one most exciting thing about installing a new coalition government in Ottawa is the chance to begin seriously addressing the environmental crisis as part of the solution to our current economic disaster.

This is the area where the combo of Stéphane Dion and Jack Layton in particular looks like a real dream team. (Gilles Duceppe has other strengths.) But will they come through?

I have been combing through reports to find out just how much we need to see in the stimulus package they will soon unveil to set us on the way to the greenhouse gas reductions we so desperately need.

There is no easy-to-pin-down number in Canada yet. But just last year (how things have changed), a highly technical and business-minded report (Reducing U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions: How Much At What Cost?) prepared by noted management firm McKinsey and Company for the U.S. Conference Board pegged the American number in a fast track scenario at $50 billion a year for the next 10 or 12 years. That suggests Canada needs to spend something less than $5 billion a year.

The PM has a penchant for political manoeuvres that make little economic sense, but prolonging uncertainty by proroguing Parliament when markets are jittery would be his worst business move yet.

1.
Proroguing is an even worse business plan than inanely implementing GST cuts during a time of inflationary versus recessionary pressure on the economy and then claiming they are part of some “already delivered” economic stimulus. It is now clear the GST cuts frittered away a bountiful surplus just when we needed it most.

2.
It’s a worse plan than starting an election bid by scorning art creators and art appreciators, even though they represent a huge recession-resistant economic engine in this country.

3.
It’s a worse plan than choosing to forsake Quebec- and mother-appeal by courting the pro-youth-incarceration vote instead. Not only is it counter to family values, but imprisoning children is both nasty and expensive.

Alliance-building is usually a game for small groups of leaders with big ideas.

But the turnout was the thing at the Good Jobs Coalition meeting on Saturday, November 22. The over-sized Metro Convention Centre meeting hall was abuzz with a standing- room-only crowd of more than 1,000 participants of every race and nationality in the city.

They came in answer to the coalition’s call to begin laying the turf for a new-style movement aiming to bridge community, environmental and labour issues.

The day-long event, months in the planning, was the product of a collaboration between the Toronto and York Region Labour Council and a host of neighbourhood, ethnic, labour and enviro organizations across the GTA, all the way from the Toronto office of the Chinese Canadian National Council to the Toronto Environmental Alliance.

Wow. It’s unanimous. Just ask the G20. Government spending to stimulate the top economies of the world is no longer a sign of suspect social welfareism hijacking good global citizenship.

It’s a watchword of planetary corporate responsibility. Cool.

But there are several pieces missing from the current G20 consensus. Above all is the necessity of linking any solution to the current economic emergency to the even larger global environmental crisis.

But leaving that elephant in the room aside (a nearly extinct metaphor, sad to say), the basic “New Deal” equation was revived only lopsidedly by the G20 last week. They left out the tax side of the story. We will pay big time if this isn’t addressed in the new global picture.

Orthodoxy is passé. it’s time to get creative. The fact that Stéphane Dion is staying on as the interim leader could be just the ticket. That is, if he and the other party leaders have the courage to step up to the plate.

The old thinking is coming so unglued, it’s getting ridiculous. Take the poor neo-?cons. First, George Bush has had to beg for huge government spending and intervention (possibly, rightly so).

Now here in Canada, Stephen Harper’s first words as our next prime minister signalled the possibility of running a deficit next year. In the old days that would’ve been heresy, and a betrayal worthy of a major media slice and dice. Not now (possibly, rightly so).

The cherished never-?were ?truisms are getting a lickin’ because they don’t even serve the system they built for themselves. It isn’t just the other guys, though. We’re in the same boat on the other side of the political spectrum.

It’s hard to be upbeat right now since the overwhelming first-past-the-post message of the election is a strengthened Harper minority. But given the array of forces aligned on his side, the Conservatives actually did relatively poorly. Harper had all the ingredients for a perfect Tory storm.

We had the lowest voter turnout in history (which always favours the incumbents), an unprecedented destabilizing economic crisis (which favours the safe haven of the known), no real opponents in the race (Jack Layton’s spin notwithstanding) and a giant corporate media conglomerate onside (CTVglobemedia) that showed its hand publicly when it actually went so far as to intervene in the election on Harper’s behalf (the outrageously unethical tape release).

Leadership isn’t just a sweater job after all.

But Canadians have failed to stand up and deliver.

With just a few days to go before voting time, it looks like all the certainties of the campaign have come undone.

The Tory sweep has turned into an Ontario disaster for them, with the Liberals polling eight points ahead at 34 per cent and the NDP at 24 per cent, just two points behind the Conservatives in Wednesday’s Harris/Decima rolling poll release.

Leadership isn’t just a sweater job after all.

Harper’s numbers are heading south because he met the economic crisis with the same politics of denial that have served him so well on the climate crisis.

With this election, environmental politics have grown from infancy, when they were mostly ignored by political caretakers (think Kyoto under Paul Martin), into a somewhat troubled and as yet politically unruly childhood.

It’s an impressionable phase. No matter how much or how little climate measures are seen as a key issue, October 14 will shape the mainstreaming of climate politics for years to come.

There are big reasons why we won’t forget this historic time. At this writing, the election down south has gone into hyperspace because nobody has a script for what happens when democracy meets Wall Street and doesn’t budge.

But whether we take it on or let it pass us by, rest assured that the carbon tax will be the forget-me-not of our own remarkable election. But that doesn’t make it interesting.

It’s so strange. The basic premise of free market fundamentalism that is the governing blueprint for both George Bush and Stephen Harper is shattering under the blow of a trillion-dollar U.S. taxpayer bailout.

Yet in the Canadian election it barely registers a blip.

But watch carefully, because as the turmoil continues, which it very likely will, things could start to change.

It’s a Berlin Wall moment, only the shoe is on the other foot. Don’t take my word for it. You can read about the death of capitalism as we know it on the front page of the Wall Street Journal these days.

Does the press think we are the ones in the midst of a presidential election? Day in, day out, commentators parse the answer to the same tired question and then serve it up again: which leader does the country prefer? But this isn’t the U.S. yet, and the results of this fall’s peculiar electoral mix won’t be decided mano-a-mano. We are a country full of different contests with their own dramas. In many ridings, unpredictable vote splits could alter the outcome. And perhaps because Stéphane Dion is so weak and the vote-shifting opportunity is so ripe, the grassroots are starting to sprout.

At first blush, it seems so unfair. How come the Yanks get all the sexy politics? The election seasons north and south scream contrast. Progressives there have a leader but no issues. We have issues and no leaders. But maybe we are deeper into Obama-land than we know. After all, he’s the one saying it is all about us, not about him. And here in Canada he’s right. We are indeed our only hope.

It's not just about us any more. The next election must defeat the Tories. We owe it to the world. It is no overstatement to say that in the last month alone, Stephen Harper's assumption of the powers of a majority-House PM has literally laid waste to the future health of both this country and the planet.

Time is of the essence. It looks like we’re going to the polls in February or March (thank you, Karlheinz Schreiber), and we cannot let this opportunity to defeat Stephen Harper slip through our fingers. John Baird’s last-minute climate change cave-in notwithstanding, the whole world is watching – literally.

As a player on the world stage, the Dalai Lama has had a banner year. People in high places are now officially taking his calls like never before. I'm wondering, though, if I'm friends with the Dalai Lama and he's friends with George Bush and Stephen Harper, does that make me friends with Harper and Bush?

I will happily cast my vote for Jack Layton on Monday (I live in his riding), because he is one of the most intelligent voices in Canadian politics. Unfortunately, you wouldn't know it from this election campaign. I don't even recognize the Layton that I appreciate when he woodenly repeats the meaningless mantra "There is a third option in this election – the NDP." Actually, Jack, no. That's an option for opposition, not for government.

When it comes to the Liberals and the Harper Conservatives, chuck the rhetoric and check out the numbers. Comparing the secret agendas of the Conservatives and the Liberals, there's only one true dividing line. It's government debt. But please don't go to sleep, because what's ultimately at stake is our sovereignty and the will of the people versus the international money markets.

I watch them every day as they sort through the endless rubble of the collapsed twin towers, and I feel submerged in the tangled shards and viscera of the culture. I find I have to seek solace from the dead to face the world of the living right now. The new world -- of war -- addles the organs and unravels the preconceived. "My brain is on New York time," says the Big Carrot clerk as she fumbles with the cash. In New York time, nothing works like it used to, especially and including our physical selves.