One of the risks of speaking publicly is that what you say might come back to haunt you.
This is particularly true if you are a politician.
In January 2012, Prime Minister Stephen Harper spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Fresh off of an electoral win that finally gave him a majority government, Mr. Harper outlined his vision for reforming Canada.
It included sweeping and ambitious changes to how Canadians would fund their retirements. He told the world he intended to overhaul the immigration system. And he spoke of the need to make oil and gas exports to Asia a "national priority."
He said: "Western nations, in particular, face a choice of whether to create the conditions for growth and prosperity, or to risk long-term economic decline. In every decision, or failure to decide, we are choosing our future right now."
At the heart of that choice for Mr. Harper was finding new energy markets. Our economic future depended on finding new buyers for our oil and gas, we were told.
Not surprisingly then, over the next two years, Mr. Harper and his Conservatives championed the Northern Gateway pipeline. It was going to open up the world to bitumen from the tar sands and bring untold prosperity.
We were led to believe that as the oil industry goes, so goes Canada.
That was then. This is now.
On Tuesday, the Globe and Mail had Mr. Harper saying: "It's obviously significant for the Canadian economy, particularly certain sectors and regions, but the oil industry isn't remotely the entire Canadian economy. There are many benefits to other parts of the economy because of these developments and although the oil industry in those regions are [sic] going to face some pretty significant adjustments, the fact of the matter is that this is a resilient industry that knows that prices go up and down."
Yes, according to the Prime Minister, Canada's economy depends on oil - unless that is inconvenient.
Then he will stress the importance of small business, manufacturing and innovation. Especially if it is an election year.
Over the next few months, leading up to the fall election, we are going to hear more and more about how great the Conservative government is at managing our economy. We will be bombarded with commercials telling us that any other party would have made a mess of things. We will be reminded of the strength of the Canadian little guy.
But I doubt that we will hear about our "national priority." Selling oil from the tar sands into the world market at less than $50/barrel is a losing proposition. You can't make the oil for that price.
We are not going to be hearing about the need to export oil and gas to Asia. At least, not from the Conservatives.
Is the low price of oil bad news for Canada? You bet.
Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz cut the bank's interest rate to ward off a potential recession. Our economy runs a real risk of underperforming. Our economic model is based on growth and inflation. When it is sluggish, every Canadian feels the hurt.
But the reality is that instead of diversifying the economy to ensure that we could withstand downturns in our resource sectors, the federal government has spent much of its time betting on oil and gas to save us all.
From the outside, it would seem they have been focused almost exclusively on the energy sector. They should pay the price for being shortsighted.
Is the decline in the price of oil the Prime Minister's fault? Of course not.
But the boon that high oil prices were to both provincial and federal revenues was not the Prime Minister's doing either. And since he has been riding the wave of economic prosperity for the past 10 years, he should now come crashing down as oil revenues dry up.
You can't claim to be the architect of success without also expecting to be the scapegoat for failure.
It is why the Prime Minister is trying to get out ahead of the coming economic downturn. The federal budget will be belt tightening in the worse possible way. Absolutely necessary, we will be told.
"But in terms of fiscal policy, the appropriate action is make sure that as long as the economy continues to grow, we balance our budget," according to Mr. Harper.
Will the voting public remember that it was his fiscal policies that got us into the mess in the first place?
The saying "don't put all your eggs into one basket" comes to mind. In this case, the Conservative government put our collective eggs into an oil and gas basket. Will they pay the price for their lack of vision?
