DON'T JUST DO SOMETHING, STAND THERE:

Ottawa's stimulus package simply did not work: The $47-billion action plan had little impact on turning around economy (CHARLES LAMMAM and NIELS VELDHUIS, April 6, 2010, Montreal Gazette)

A Fraser Institute study published last week found the federal government's deficit-financed $47.2-billion Economic Action Plan had virtually no impact on last year's economic turnaround. [...]

A vast body of academic research casts serious doubt on the ability of government stimulus spending to boost economic activity. Worse still, the government's estimates of the impact of the Economic Action Plan on employment and economic growth are based on discredited assumptions that have no empirical basis.

An important recent analysis by Harvard economists Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna of stimulus initiatives in Canada and 20 other industrialized countries from 1970 to 2007 found that failed stimulus initiatives almost exclusively relied on government spending.

Another study by Stanford University Professor John Taylor reviewed the evidence over the past decade and concluded "there is little reliable empirical evidence that government spending is a way to end a recession or accelerate a recovery."