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.

Look in any dictionary and you will find that the word "stimulus" is connected to stimulate, meaning the act of generating a form of positive assistance.

This is the type of action that, by acting in a shrewd, timely manner, can prevent a negative response.  It makes one think of that old saying, "A stitch in time saves nine."

Canada's Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, speaking in Ottawa, is apparently working on a different operational definition where stimulus and the act of stimulation are concerned.  While Canada is headed for a likely recession, Flaherty said that he had no plans to introduce an economic stimulus package before next spring's budget.

"We've made dramatic tax cuts already," Flaherty explained.  He later added, "We're not in a recession right now."  While conceding that Canada is "not in a recession right now" he concedes that it is "reasonable" that the nation will be in a "technical recession," which is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth, by the first quarter of 2009.