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A Canadian member of parliament and Conservative leadership hopeful has vowed to scrap the country’s plans to issue a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
Pierre Poilievre, who is leading the race to become the next leader of the Conservative Party, has said that if he is elected as Prime Minister he would ban the country’s central bank from creating a CBDC.
Speaking on April 28, Poilievre said that innovation involving digital currency should be left to the private sector, and stated his opposition to a CBDC on privacy and competition grounds.
As quoted by CBC, Poilievre said a digital currency would put the central bank in competition with commercial banks, and said that he is concerned that a push to “nationalise” deposits would also lead to “politicised banking”.
In a policy briefing seen by CBC, Poilievre suggested that a deposit-accepting central bank would be akin to a state-run bank, and that politicians could "bestow blessings on voters" and "begin making election promises of more generous interest rates for depositors or other benefits".
He added that the central bank would be able to use the CBDC to monitor and censor its users. "It can surveil what you're doing, what you're spending and potentially abuse your civil liberties," he said.
"We saw this just several months ago when the Prime Minister involved the Emergencies Act in order to freeze the bank accounts of his political opponents," he added, referring to actions taken against the organisers of the truck convoy protest in Ottawa.
Thorn in the central bank’s side
Poilievre is a fierce critic of Canada’s central bank, whose COVID-era policy of unprecedented quantitative easing he has described as “financially illiterate”.
If in power, he has also said that he would extend the auditor general’s authority to cover the Bank of Canada, and would push for a review of its COVID-era policies that took its balance sheet to a record high of more than C$500bn.
"Justin Trudeau has threatened the Bank of Canada's independence with a half-trillion dollars of deficits that required the central bank to print money and cause inflation," he said.
"That’s ‘Justinflation’. I will end it by restoring central bank independence, mandating an independent audit of all the money printing and stopping the risky central bank digital currency.”
In March, Canada’s annual inflation rate hit a 30-year high of 6.7 percent.
Bitcoin admirer
Poilievre is a vocal supporter of Bitcoin, which he has previously promoted as a way to “opt out of inflation”.
“People should have the freedom, if they choose, to use other forms of money,” he said on the campaign trail last month.
“Government should not subsidise that money, it should not do anything to favour or disfavour that money, it should simply create a level playing field with simple, easy-to-follow rules, and strong sanctions for anyone who acts fraudulently.
“The free market should decide which money people want to use, and the government can be on notice that people have other options, so if they’re going to abuse our money, we can use other currencies.”
As Poilievre’s critics at the Bank of Canada have pointed out, however, the price of Bitcoin is currently down about 45 percent from its all-time high of US$69,000 set in November last year, meaning that it has lost significantly more purchasing power than the Canadian dollar during that time.
