Hon. Julie Miville-Dechêne: I have a question for you, senator. I am not an expert in monetary policy, but you made several references to the Australian example. These days, Australia is referred to for all sorts of examples. In this case, did having a mandate that you consider to be more balanced between prosperity and the fight against inflation have a measurable impact on monetary policy? For example, is Australia less likely than Canada to deal with inflation by raising interest rates? Is it possible to see whether this model has already had an impact?

Senator Bellemare: Thank you for that excellent question, senator. Unfortunately, I can’t say whether there’s been any impact in Australia.

What I can tell you, however, is that in the United States, there has obviously been an impact. The United States also has a dual mandate, specifically price stability and full employment. Pierre Fortin has been working on this issue, and I had the honour and opportunity to speak with Janet Yellen, who was chair of the Federal Reserve Board just before being appointed Treasury Secretary by President Biden. She told me this could explain why the unemployment rate was often much higher in Canada than in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s.

I examined this issue in a book I published, but it hasn’t been updated for the 1980s and 1990s. It’s clear that Canada didn’t increase its productivity as much as it could have, because of its strict monetary policy, but I didn’t do that kind of regression analysis. I compared the statistics for countries with dual mandates, and I studied the matter of Canada’s stringency. As for Australia, I can’t answer your question. Thank you.