Americans can take solace from the fact that Canada has its own home-grown version of George W. Bush in the person of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Even though abortion is legal in Canada, Harper continues to push the envelope on this issue.  Some people believe part of his hidden agenda has always been to re-open the abortion debate.

Last week, the Harper government announced that it would no longer suport abortion as any part of its foreign-aid focus on maternal health.  This far-right Tory government will consider funding family planning measures, such as contraception, but not abortion under any circumstances.  

Even U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton admonished the Canadian government in her recent visit to Canada, stating the health initiative should include access to safe and legal abortion.  As Bob Rae, foreign affairs critic for the Liberal Opposition said, the Conservatives have re-opened the abortion debate by telling countries that are the poorest that we won't apply the law that we have in Canada.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Finance Minister James Flaherty had been reassuring the citizenry in the same way that Senator John McCain had said that the fundamentals of the U.S. economy were strong, a statement credited with mightily assisting Barack Obama to victory last November.

The stunning element is how closely the statistics of the two nations mirror each other based on this week's reports.  

Les Whittington of the Ottawa Bureau of the Toronto Star stated regarding the February 6 announcement, "In the worst employment showing in decades, the Canadian economy shed 129,000 jobs in January as the unemployment rate shot up to 7.2 per cent from 6.6 per cent the previous months, Statistics Canada said.  Nearly all the jobs lost were full-time positions."

In the U.S. 598,000 jobs were slashed, the worst showing since the end of 1974.  The U.S. unemployment figure was just a tick higher than the 7.2 reading in Canada, reaching 7.6 percent.