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A year ago

The sketch for November 27, 2008.

“The greatest histories,” Jim Flaherty mused about a half hour into explaining the state of the national economy, “are written in the toughest times.”

Shortly thereafter, he was finished. And shortly after his final words, he and the Prime Minister took their leave, long gone by the time Scott Brison, Gilles Duceppe, Jack Layton and Thomas Mulcair got round to blistering the Commons paint with indictments of the story just told.

In the thirty minutes preceding, Flaherty had explained, in the most ominous of adjectives, the depth and breadth of the crisis that now faces us. Unprecedented. Sudden. Devastating. Historic. “Canada,” he said, “has not faced such severe challenges in a generation.”

Perhaps hoping to assist those of us who traffic in symbolism, an infant wailed from the gallery.

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