The continued unraveling of the U.S. economy is not something Canada’s federal political party leaders should be caught flat footed on.

As the federal campaign rolls on to the Oct. 15 election, voters should be asking all of them about how their government would deal with the economic fallout coming our way, should they be so fortunate as to be elected prime minister.

When all the leaders talk of spending programs for their party platform self interests, all of them should be held accountable to the changing time before us.

Unfortunately, we as voters may not be prepared to handle the truth, and the party leaders and their campaign strategists all know that.

If you watch what is happening south of the border, the U.S. economic meltdown is happening right in the midst of a presidential election, but neither Republican John McCain or his Democrat opponent Barack Obama want to deal with those fiscal realities on the campaign stump. That would be political suicide, and sadly they are right in that notion.

If either Obama or McCain were to stand up and spell out what has to happen in order to the U.S. to find its economic footing once again, they would lose the election. So instead, they dance around the question, as do the other politicians in Congress and the Senate, while American taxpayers are losing billions of dollars that will never be recouped.

When it comes to elections, Canadian voters are not much better at handling the truth.

We want to believe the politician who says our social service ills can be fiscally healed, how we can spend more to get tough on crime, how we can control rising health costs without some form of privatizing services. But neither of us are living in modern reality.

– The Kelowna Capital News