Hon. Pierrette Ringuette: Senator Bellemare, thank you again for sparking our imagination and prompting discussion about the Bank of Canada. You’ll recall that a few months ago, when the Governor of the Bank of Canada appeared before our committee, I asked him who he was consulting. He replied that he was consulting several Crown corporations and interdepartmental committees to gather as much information as possible.

Given the evolving nature of the economy, whether because of the pandemic, supply chains or the environment, do you think it’s a good idea for this advisory committee to be a permanent committee? Shouldn’t it instead be made up of ad hoc members, so as to capitalize on experts in whatever field the geopolitical or economic situation calls for?

Senator Bellemare: Thank you for the question. I think that this should be a permanent committee whose members serve a renewable three-year term so they have time to really get into the files. The bill states that the chosen experts must be able to demonstrate outstanding expertise in two of the five following areas: the labour market, open-economy macroeconomics, supply chains, the financial system and risk management. These are important areas of expertise from different backgrounds.

Let’s get back to transparency. In your question, the governor relies, as he said, on core inflation, a statistic whose accuracy is unknown. We’ve been told that this is a metric calculated by stripping out the most volatile components of the consumer price index, but what exactly is core inflation?

These are questions that a permanent committee could study and then explain to people, and this would build confidence around what the bank is doing.