* While Sun Media today endorses the Conservatives in this election, it does not come unencumbered by caveats or conditions.
It comes, instead, with warnings and serious strings attached, even as it reflects our strong belief that Stephen Harper needs a majority to make the changes this country desperately needs.
Because Canada's future economic health is the forefront issue, Harper's deft handling of the recession cannot be understated, and it should not go unrewarded.
But here's some Hard News and Straight Talk for the Tories.
They had better deliver.
From the day we took our first breath, what has become the largest newspaper chain in Canada has always stood for the advancement of small-c conservatism, and our demand for transparency in a smaller but efficient government has never wavered.
Under Harper's watch, however, the federal civil service has sadly become even more bloated. In fact, one in seven eligible voters tomorrow takes from the public purse — meaning we have too many "takers" in Canada and not enough "makers."
This has to end.
In 2006, Harper vowed accountability and transparency in his government yet then proceeded, among other things, to muzzle his caucus and stifle the flow of public information, including on Crown corporations — like the CBC — that should already be on the government's website, not falsely wrapped in secrecy.
If a Harper majority is not achieved, however, we shudder at the destructive path Michael Ignatieff's Liberals or Jack Layton's NDP — alone or in cahoots — will take by refusing to address the over-sated public service, refusing to reduce taxation, and then pushing the deficit to truly unaffordable heights.
Making hard decisions for the good of the country is not in their genes. But it should be in Harper's.
Ignatieff is a patrician, high in forehead but short on insight. He knows next to nothing about the country he abandoned for more than 30 years, yet he somehow expects to be consecrated based on his perceived Liberal entitlement.
And Jack knows jack. There he was this past week, promising to lower taxes at the pump in one breath while calling for cap-and-trade in the next — a scheme proven to cause an even greater skyrocketing of home-heating, electricity and gas prices.
From the outset of the campaign, the promises Harper put forward had a responsible timeline for a balanced budget by 2014, and it was not based on maxing Canada's credit and then taxing Canadians into utter despair.
After all, it's the taxpayers who foot every bill, and Harper must respect this undeniable fact unequivocally.
Otherwise, we will go for his political throat like no dog on a bone ever seen.
You, Stephen Harper, are not their boss.
They are yours.