As soon as it won its coveted majority, the Harper government put the pedal to the metal on the trade front, with a stampede of new free-trade deals. The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade currently lists 18 different deals in play, ranging from puny (Panama and Jordan) to gargantuan (Europe, Japan and India).

Anyone who stands in the way of this juggernaut clearly must oppose trade in general. At least that's how the Conservatives portray the issue, attempting to brand its New Democratic opponents as economically illiterate dinosaurs.

When it comes to Canada's lousy record in productivity and innovation, the standard prescription of economists is both clear and predictable. They believe unregulated markets are the best way to allocate resources and determine the composition of output. Therefore, to improve efficiency and innovation, simply improve markets: Eliminate "distorting" taxes. Eliminate regulations. Sign more free-trade agreements. Cut "red tape." That will unleash the full potential of the private sector to innovate and optimize, and Canada will become a northern tiger.

It's a Tuesday night in Hamilton, Ontario, and I'm sitting with Myrcurial (aka James Arlen) talking about makers, hackers' activism and hyperlocal journalism. Myrcurial is an online security consultant, a dyed-in-the-wool hacker and the wise-old-man of think|haus, a hacker/maker workshop that's being constructed around us as we sit in an ex-autoparts outlet in the northend of town.

Sure, Michael Ignatieff whipped up election panic this week over Stephen Harper's accountability summary, but let's be clear: the Tories and Liberals get nothing but failing grades on their report cards.

The exam is on the economy, and they are both way off the mark.

They'd better bone up, because like it or not, we are in a transformational time. For god's sake -- we just acquired a 12 per cent ownership stake in General Motors and paid inconceivably big money for it. Why? Head-in-the-sand denial of new realities and lack of innovation did in the industry.

It was enough to send a personal fashion stylist over the edge. Several hundred mostly nerdy economists recently undertook their annual pilgrimage to the spring conference of the Canadian Economics Association, held at the University of Toronto. They bustled from session to session, calculators in hand, enthralled by presentations with titles like "Comparisons of Linear Item Pricing Methods for Iterative Multi-Unit Reverse Combinatorial Auctions" or "The Economic Analysis of Blackjack: An Application of Prospect Theory."