The crude facts, courtesy of David Dodge

David Dodge calls it as he sees it. He always has and, even when he had to choose his words more carefully as a central banker, he was known for candid (and occasionally vulgar) views. Early in his term as Bank of Canada governor, as the country was bouncing back from the non-recession of 2001, he was confronted with some new data, of which he was skeptical.

"Is this really what's going on in the labour market?" he asked, according to a former adviser. "Or is this just a shitty survey?"

So thank you, sir, for throwing a nice big bucket of cold water on all the upbeat talk coming out of official Ottawa, all the prime ministerial predictions of a return to speedy growth, and asking the rude question: Is this really what's going on the Canadian economy? Or is this just a [insert profanity here]forecast?

"I think anybody would be dreaming in Technicolor to think that you're going to get through this by the third quarter of this year," Mr. Dodge told The Globe's Heather Scoffield in an exclusive interview Tuesday.

Yeah, yeah, our banks are in decent shape. Doesn't matter, or at least it doesn't matter as much as Finance Minister Jim Flaherty would have you believe. We're a flea in the global banking system, and in most of the developed world, banks are stressed. In the United States, they're in a terrible state. Large parts of the credit market are still plugged and no amount of financial Drano has been able to get them working.

Recovery? It will come, Mr. Dodge said, but when it does, don't expect things to look the way they did a couple of years ago. Big industries in Canada, such as making cars, have been shrunk forever, he said. The jobs aren't coming back. Ditto for cutting trees and making paper. The unemployment rate? Try 10 per cent, Mr. Dodge said, a level it hasn't reached since the bad old days when he was smacking his head against a wall, trying to convince Paul Martin that big, persistent deficits really were a major problem.

All this doomsaying is an attention-grabber. But Mr. Dodge doesn't need attention. There's nothing to be gained by him in being gloomy just for the sake of it. What's the agenda, then? His comments are a wakeup call to a country that might be a little too smug right now in its sense of economic superiority. But they are also a plea to look ahead. In essence, Mr. Dodge has just cast doubt on the central assumption that guides the Harper government's thinking on the economy.

That assumption is: This is temporary. It's an ordinary downturn and therefore calls for the usual response - a tax break here, a short-term spending initiative there. But by using the phrase "piss money down a rat hole" in the interview, Mr. Dodge made it pretty clear what he thinks of the Harperites' approach. He didn't attack specific programs, but we can guess what he's talking about when he says the government should focus its spending where there's a payoff later, in better productivity.

Sorry, but giving tax credits to people to subsidize the painting of their homes, a centrepiece of the January budget, doesn't seem to qualify. Neither do handouts to supplicants in distressed industries. Ottawa is being asked to borrow some $6-billion or $7-billion and lend it to General Motors and Chrysler, who employ barely 20,000 people in Canada and aren't likely to be employing more. It's hard to fathom a more backward-looking economic policy than that. Time to think ahead: How might $7-billion be better used?

And, of course, the government's forecast of a balanced budget in five years is also worthless - "totally unrealistic," Mr. Dodge said. His preferred answer for filling the budget gap would be to reverse Mr. Harper's GST cut. Before the Conservative government took office, the GST brought in $33-billion to Ottawa. This year it will likely contribute $26-billion. Raising the rate to 7 per cent again, once a recovery is in place, would help Ottawa balance the budget. But if that proves too politically difficult, how will the feds prevent another cycle of perennial deficits? Time to think ahead: If not the GST, which taxes should be raised instead?

Mr. Dodge is past the stage of his career where he has to come up with solutions. But he hasn't stopped worrying about the problems. Because his word carries such weight, he's an ideal guy to act as Ottawa's fiscal conscience.

In a country that will add $80-billion to the national debt in the next two years, somebody has to.