Poilievre would add audit for Bank of Canada, halt digital currency plan
Follows rebuke by officials on crypto claims
Conservative leadership hopeful Pierre Poilievre would stop the Bank of Canada from implementing its own digital currency and even ban future governments from doing so, while also promising to empower the Auditor General's office to audit the central bank.
Poilievre's policy announcement came days after his claims that Canadians can “opt out” of inflation with cryptocurrency were rebuked by the Bank of Canada's top officials in the parliamentary finance committee. Poilievre did not repeat those claims on Thursday.
Rather, the Conservative leadership candidate has promised to prevent the central bank from ever issuing a cash-like central bank digital currency (CBDC) that it has been working on for a few years but has said it has “no plans to launch” unless absolutely necessary.
Whether it sees the light of day would ultimately be the federal government's decision.
“We all know that Canadians have digital money already. It's called a bank account. We have debit cards, credit cards, PayPal, email transfers and plenty of other ways that people can transact the Canadian dollar digitally without the Bank of Canada controlling it,” said Poilievre.
“So what's the difference that this new digital currency by the central bank would bring?”
Poilievre, who has promised to “unleash” the power of cryptocurrency should he run the country, reiterated that Canada's official currency would remain the Canadian dollar but said that “people should have the freedom to use other forms of money including Bitcoin” should they choose to.
His advocacy for cryptocurrency prompted stark criticism from leadership contender and rival Patrick Brown who, in promoting his promise to crack down on bad-faith lenders and cap credit card interest rates, blasted Poilievre for presenting “risky schemes as credible economic policy.”
“Pierre Poilievre doesn't care if Canadians lose everything because he told them to gamble everything on volatile things like cryptocurrencies on the advice of his YouTube advisers, so long as he gets to promote cheap catchphrases and attract the social media attention he craves,” said Brown in a press release.
“Giving Pierre Poilievre an even bigger megaphone to promote his dangerous economic ideas will spell certain doom for the Conservative party in the next election and, more importantly, could result in millions losing their pensions, retirement savings, or even their homes.”
Speaking outside the Bank of Canada Museum, on Thursday, Poilievre also promised to adopt former leader and current MP Andrew Scheer's private member's bill — the Bank of Canada Accountability Act — if he is elected prime minister to subject the bank to extra audits.
Scheer's proposal would add another layer of verifications, as the Bank of Canada is already subject to many audits and reports, which are tabled in Parliament each year.
But Poilievre promised to go even further by asking the Auditor General to also audit the bank's quantitative easing program “to determine why the bank missed its inflation target so badly.”
Pressed by reporters on Thursday, Poilievre would not say if he would replace Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem if he became prime minister, nor did he repeat his recent claim made on social media that Canada's central bank is “financially illiterate.”
“There is no question that the central bank was dead wrong when it predicted we would have deflation. Now we have inflation,” he simply said.
Macklem did admit to MPs earlier this week that the Bank of Canada had “substantially revised up” the outlook for inflation, and that it is “considerably higher” than expected because Russia's invasion of Ukraine boosted commodity prices.
“Look, we got a lot of things right. We got some things wrong. And we are responding,” he said, pointing to the recent raise of interest rates by 50 basis points to one per cent in an attempt to stop inflation. “We've signalled very clearly that Canadians should expect further increases.”
Asked about his own credentials in economics, Poilievre pointed to his interventions when he was finance critic to prove that he had predicted long ago that inflation would be out of control.
“Twenty times, in the House of Commons, I predicted there would be the inflation we know today. Twenty times I told the governor of the Bank of Canada and two finance ministers we would have this inflation. They said no, there's going to be deflation. That's what these experts said.
“In the end, I'm right. They're wrong.
WE GOT A LOT OF THINGS RIGHT. WE GOT SOME THINGS WRONG. AND WE ARE RESPONDING.