Government Borrowing & Central Bank Printing

here flourishers governor i was fascinated to hear you say that the purpose of your quantitative easing that is these mass purchases of government bonds is to help households and businesses and you didn't mention that it was designed to help governments spend borrowed money on april 19th the finance minister introduced a budget which proposed a deficit of 154 billion dollars that works out to three billion dollars a week that's how many bonds uh how many dollar values worth of bonds the government will have to sell how much are you proposing to buy every single week just the number please right now we're buying three billion dollars a week well what a coincidence that is you've got you're going to the government is going to be selling three billion dollars worth of bonds per week and you're going to be buying three billion dollars a week mr chairman it is a miracle uh what a coincidence that those two numbers line up so closely and you announced that three billion dollar number exactly two days after the minister laid out the same number in her budget is that a pure coincidence what i can tell you is that our purchases of government bonds are guided by our inflation target we have seen considerable progress in the recovery we don't need as much quantitative easing and that's what guided our decision to reduce the amount of purchases so so on an annual basis the government will will borrow and net 154 billion dollars and you will provide a net 156 billion dollars so there's an extra two billion keep the change uh mr government uh that has to be a coincidence but you're saying no no the purpose of this is the inflation target well three of your four measures of inflation are now above the target which would presumably mean you would pull back and even the financial post said central banks and government out of touch with main street when it comes to rising costs of living the canada's food price report shows that food costs increased almost three percent last year with an expected increase of almost seven percent in meat uh almost six percent in bakery and almost seven percent in vegetables not to mention housing prices are up more than a third in just over a year um i think we have enough inflation mr governor uh why do you keep printing money mr governor it it's really quite straightforward uh we're in an economy that still has major parts that are very weak there are still far too many canadians unemployed there are large parts of the economy that remain well below their capacity that is all putting downward pressure uh on inflation and to you know give you a picture in terms of actual canadians uh we're still 300 000 jobs below where we were pre-pandemic level and over the more than year new canadians you know canadian students have graduated canadians ventures labor force it's about uh 500 uh below the 500 000 below previous pandemic level that is putting downward pressure on inflation and we are committed to supporting the recovery getting canadians back to work and that is critical to get inflation sustainably at our two percent target and that is what is guiding our policy decisions mr governor i have no doubt that in that unemployment is high the job market is terrible but inflation is high too you say you admitted today for the first time that you're going to bump up on three percent inflation something that you told us and your predecessor told us uh was not possible when you first testified about this quantitative easing program only a year ago and the people you claim to be helping low-wage workers women and young people they're the victims of inflation you have admitted sir at this committee that the poor and the young and the dispossessed are disproportionately harmed by inflation because they deal more in cash and because they don't own assets that inflate so why are you once again pumping billions of dollars into the system to inflate the things that the rich own but that the poor have to buy thus widening the gap between rich and poor let me clarify a couple of points first of all we are committed to achieving our two percent inflation target an important and and that as you highlight it uh is important particularly to low low-income canadians because they tend to hold more cash than other canadians and so they suffer more from inflation so it is really important and we have a very strong record over the last 30 years uh of achieving our two percent uh inflation target on average and we content we we absolutely intend to continue that um secondly as i've highlighted and as you mentioned uh there are many unemployed canadians there are far too many canadians out of work with respect governor my question the best thing we can do to help those canadians is to get them back to work last question pierre printing cash won't do that do that your method was tried in the early 80s it led to stagflation high unemployment and high inflation you claimed that this was about this money printing was about restoring uh functioning of markets but credit and capital markets are flush with cash more than ever before you claim it's about getting to the two percent target we're already over the two percent target the only thing that makes any sense is that you're printing about exactly the same amount of money as this government needs to borrow but by funding the government with printed money you're making housing unaffordable for young people in my riding and you're making food and other essentials unaffordable for seniors and the poor and this policy has to come to it mr chair uh will the governor commit that he'll stop printing money and giving it to the government once we hit uh three percent inflation with respect uh our policies are working the economy this is a bad third wave uh and and and we need to get through that but we have seen impressive resilience in this economy and that has a lot to do with the adaptability and resilience of canadians but it also has a lot to do with the fiscal and monetary supports that have been provided uh this economy still has some ways to go uh before it we we hit that complete recovery and what we are committed to do is to support the economy through the full length of the recovery to get inflation sustainably back on target thank you both

Channel: Pierre Poilievre

Views: 24,536

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Keywords: canadian politics, pierre Poilievre, house of commons, Canada, parliament of Canada, justin trudeau, liberal party of Canada, conservative, conservative party of Canada, Stephen harper, rona ambrose, andrew scheer, “liberal”, “liberal, party, of, canada”, trudeau, “scheer”, Harper, “mgtow”, “shapiro”, “Ben, shapiro”

Id: uckM5i_z6ek

Length: 7min 25sec (445 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 28 2021