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House Hansard - 27

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 9, 2022 02:00PM
Context: House Hansard - 27 - Feb/9/22
Hon. Andrew Scheer (Regina—Qu'Appelle, CPC)
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-253, An Act to amend the Bank of Canada Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts. He said: Mr. Speaker, I want to sincerely thank my colleague, the hon. member for Carleton, who has been warning about the dangers of inflation for some time now, which is very relevant to my bill. My bill is called the Bank of Canada accountability act. Right now, the Bank of Canada has a special exemption from the purview of the Auditor General. The Auditor General is not able to conduct the types of audits that he or she does over other government departments and agencies. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Bank of Canada has massively expanded the money supply in Canada. As a result, we are seeing runaway inflation. In addition to buying government bonds, the Bank of Canada has also purchased corporate bonds, and what this bill would do is grant the authority to the Auditor General to conduct the typical types of audits, in addition to performance audits, so that we can have a better picture of what the bank is doing. This would ensure that the bank is ultimately responsible to Parliament. Our trading partners around the world already do this. The United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand all have their auditor generals perform this type of function over their central banks. It is high time that we expand the accountability and transparency measures of the Auditor General to include the Bank of Canada.
255 words
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