As the white hat cowboys said so predictably and often in old western movies, it's quiet around here. Too quiet.

One explanation is that Parliament was silent last week. Honourable members left Nov. 6 to be home for Remembrance Day and won't be back until today.

Another reason is less obvious and more troubling. It's sadly possible that politicians haven't much to say when they're not threatening each other with yet another election.

No one is keen to admit it, but most of the energy escaped the capital along with the fading risk of what would have been the fourth campaign in five years. Instead of readying for another appeal to the people, party leaders and followers are now either shocked and appalled by pretty petty stuff or indignantly defensive.

Much of the noise has been about those cartoon stimulus cheques the ruling party loves presenting to ridings prescient enough to pick the last election's winner. But squabbling also broke out over the suspiciously circuitous route the Olympic torch will trace through mostly Conservative territory.

Matters of more pressing importance are getting less attention. It's past time for Stephen Harper to stop talking about stimulating the economy and start explaining how his government will manage its fast accruing deficits.

That's not a relaxed conversation. Nor is it one that, judging by the last election or recent performance, beckons to the prime minister or other party leaders. It requires the same kind of warnings about looming hard times and tough decisions that Conservatives, Liberals and the NDP refused to sound during the last campaign even when recession and deficits became inevitable.

As federal budget officer Kevin Page forecast recently, Ottawa is falling back into the bad old days and worse habits of structural deficits. Eliminating systemic shortfalls between tax revenues and program expenditures will require painful adjustments that no government nurturing re-election prospects wants to confirm.

Wrenching course corrections would be inescapable even if mounting pressures weren't making the situation worse. An aging population and the fundamental changes now retooling the country's manufacturing core are just beginning to make demands that would have sorely tested Ottawa's coping strengths even before the fall of U.S. financial icons triggered international economic panic.

Now Harper's government is only short months away from a federal budget that must somehow square the circle between fast emerging, plainly visible realities and Conservative message-track promises not to raise taxes or slash programs.

Jim Flaherty played fun-with-figures a year ago and Harper had to beg the Governor General to save his government by suspending Parliament. Should the finance minister try that again, Conservatives will lose all credibility with banking and business sectors that know what's ahead and need early assurance that the government is willing and able to choose between unpleasant options.

No politician wants to be the bearer of bad tidings. In particular, minority prime ministers, with their nasty, short and brutal lifespans prefer to put off the unavoidable until its inescapable.

But not talking about approaching horrors won't make them disappear. No matter which party rules after the next election, the federal government will have to make choices that will touch the lives of all Canadians.

So far politicians of every partisan stripe are staying quiet.

Too quiet.

James Travers writes on national affairs. jtravers@thespec.com

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