Harper's management of the economy has been little less than disastrous. He is a pawn of the Global Trading and Financial Oligarchy. He and that dimwit Minister of Finance of his (for most of his tenure) Flaherty have mortgaged Canada's future to the inchoate lunacy of the Global Free Markets, especially those of currency and credit in Monetarism.
With Free Trade, it has gutted the Middle Class, and ravaged the Work Place, deindustrialized the nation and turned farming into a subsistence profession. Wealth has been radically polarized; taxation is evermore regressive and advantageous to the rich; markets are deregulated and sold out to the greed of pools of capital, rather the good the community as a whole. A new form of colonialism has been imposed, with unprocessed raw material being shipped offshore for processing, dismantling anything resembling a sovereign integrated industrial economy.
Canada's currency floats at the whim of Money Market Hedge Funds, whose only goal is creating havock on money bourses and holding nations hostage. The ransom is austerity and privitization, a euphemism for selling out public assets to international corporate fronts. It's currency will ultimately be usurped by international forms tender of like the Euro, under control of Supranational agencies like the IMF and World Bank, totally disenfranchising a national monetary and credit policy prerogative.
Look at Greece, that is Canada's future if it does not take hold of its own destiny, It's oil and its water will be up for sale. Canada's identity and sovereignty are now indistinguishable from that of American imperial power brokers.
With all that you'd hope there might be some saving grace in a sense of traditional and cultural social policies. But there is NONE of that. Harper couldn't care less. In league with the cult of Economic Liberalism, traditional conservativism is something that is payed lip service to lock up a voter demographic. But is, in reality, deeply antithetical to the libertarianism, anti-nationalism and government disassembly of the real Gobal 'Neoconservatism' Harper's government represents.
Harper lacks vision, passion, integrity, intellect, imagination and courage. I'm very uneasy about an NDP government, as they are so wrapped in New Age illogic and deconstruction (radical feminism, multiculturalism, homosexuality, environmentalism). But i'm wondering if Anything is better than the incompetent dolt and foreign quisling and petty ideologue we have in Harper.