Opinion
PM Trudeau’s “Monetary Policy” gaffe could cost the Liberals the election. But will it?

Back in 1993 things were not going well for Canada’s Progressive Conservative Government. Brian Mulroney’s government had served 2 mandates and Canadians were clearly ready to move on. The Conservatives decided Kim Campbell would be the best leader to bring a renewed excitement to their reelection hopes. Campbell was a fresh face and that was important to the party which was losing support quickly. She was also from Vancouver, which was a nice change for the party normally represented by leaders from Ontario or Quebec. Even more importantly, when she won the leadership she would become the first female leader of a country in North America. As Canadians would discover just a few months later though, no one cared about any of that. That campaign did not go well. The Conservatives not only lost. They were decimated right out of official party standing. The governing party won just 2 seats in the entire nation (Jean Charest in Quebec, and Elsie Wayne in New Brunswick). Kim Campbell did not even win her own seat. Henceforth the Reform Party represented the Conservative voice for the next two elections.
For one reason or another, Canadians simply did not connect with Kim Campbell. One of the biggest gaffes of that election campaign came when a reporter pressed Campbell for details on an issue and she replied “The election is not a time to discuss serious issues.” That was the wrong answer. Despite what she may have truly meant, all Canadians heard was “I don’t need to explain anything to you.”. That was exactly the wrong thing to say at the worst possible time.
Why bring this up now, 28 years later? Well Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made his first major gaffe of this election campaign. And for those who care about monetary policy (which should be everyone who pays taxes and works or has savings, etc) it’s very likely as stunning a statement as Kim Campbell made three decades ago.
First some background. In 2021, Canadians find themselves in an astounding situation. When the covid pandemic hit last year governments all over the world shut down their economies for weeks, and then months. Government stimulus was the order of the day and Canada’s was among the most generous in the world. People were paid to stay at home. Businesses were paid to continue to provide jobs to people working from home. Landlords were paid to keep tenants afloat. All in all, government money is being spent at unprecedented rates.
To pay for all this the Trudeau government attempted to pass a bill through Parliament which would allow it to raise taxes at will without a budget and without even coming back to ask Parliament to present a plan or ask for approval. That didn’t go over so well. But instead of turning back the taps, or introducing a budget with higher taxes the government worked out a plan with the Bank of Canada. How this works basically is that every month the Bank of Canada prints out a few billion dollars, and the government uses that to pay for all the stimulus they want. Over the first year of covid that totalled about 350 Billion dollars!
The Bank of Canada has left the core function expressed in its mandate in order to print all this extra money. Despite it’s best efforts to decouple inflation from the printing of extra money, it’s not working. Canada’s inflation rate has been blowing through the target of 2% month after month after month.
This is the the mandate as expressed by the Bank of Canada itself on its website.
The Bank of Canada is the nation’s central bank. Its mandate, as defined in the Bank of Canada Act, is “to promote the economic and financial welfare of Canada.” The Bank’s vision is to be a leading central bank—dynamic, engaged and trusted—committed to a better Canada.
The Bank has four core functions:
- Monetary policy: The Bank’s monetary policy framework aims to keep inflation low, stable and predictable.
- Financial system: The Bank promotes safe, sound and efficient financial systems within Canada and internationally.
- Currency: The Bank designs, issues and distributes Canada’s bank notes.
- Funds management: The Bank acts as fiscal agent for the Government of Canada, managing its public debt programs and foreign exchange reserves.
The Bank of Canada’s mandate is expiring at the end of this year and the new mandate could change. Some are saying the Bank should continue to print money at an unprecedented rate and Canadians will learn to live with high inflation. Considering this drives up the cost of everything from our homes and vehicles, to the food we eat there could hardly be a more important issue. That’s why PM Trudeau’s response to this question in Vancouver this week is so stunning. When asked if he would consider a higher tolerance for inflation going forward here’s what he said.
Reporter Question about the renewal of the Bank of Canada mandate due at the end of 2021:
-Do you have thoughts about that mandate? Would you consider a slightly higher tolerance for inflation?
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: “When I think about the biggest, most important economic policy this government, if re-elected, would move forward, you’ll forgive me if I don’t think about monetary policy.”
Of course this spurred an immediate reaction from the opposition Conservatives. That oppostion is perhaps best summed up in this address from Pierre Poilievre.
The question is, will Canadians punish Prime Minister Trudeau for either lacking basic economic knowledge, or not caring about it? Kim Campbell failed to win her own seat, but she did not seem to connect well with Canadians at all even before that election campaign. Justin Trudeau has so far been immune to gaffes. Even though he’s had more than 5 years in government, millions of Canadians stand by him loyally. Will this time be any different?
Business
Mark Carney’s Fiscal Fantasy Will Bankrupt Canada

By Gwyn Morgan
Mark Carney was supposed to be the adult in the room. After nearly a decade of runaway spending under Justin Trudeau, the former central banker was presented to Canadians as a steady hand – someone who could responsibly manage the economy and restore fiscal discipline.
Instead, Carney has taken Trudeau’s recklessness and dialled it up. His government’s recently released spending plan shows an increase of 8.5 percent this fiscal year to $437.8 billion. Add in “non-budgetary spending” such as EI payouts, plus at least $49 billion just to service the burgeoning national debt and total spending in Carney’s first year in office will hit $554.5 billion.
Even if tax revenues were to remain level with last year – and they almost certainly won’t given the tariff wars ravaging Canadian industry – we are hurtling toward a deficit that could easily exceed 3 percent of GDP, and thus dwarf our meagre annual economic growth. It will only get worse. The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates debt interest alone will consume $70 billion annually by 2029. Fitch Ratings recently warned of Canada’s “rapid and steep fiscal deterioration”, noting that if the Liberal program is implemented total federal, provincial and local debt would rise to 90 percent of GDP.
This was already a fiscal powder keg. But then Carney casually tossed in a lit match. At June’s NATO summit, he pledged to raise defence spending to 2 percent of GDP this fiscal year – to roughly $62 billion. Days later, he stunned even his own caucus by promising to match NATO’s new 5 percent target. If he and his Liberal colleagues follow through, Canada’s defence spending will balloon to the current annual equivalent of $155 billion per year. There is no plan to pay for this. It will all go on the national credit card.
This is not “responsible government.” It is economic madness.
And it’s happening amid broader economic decline. Business investment per worker – a key driver of productivity and living standards – has been shrinking since 2015. The C.D. Howe Institute warns that Canadian workers are increasingly “underequipped compared to their peers abroad,” making us less competitive and less prosperous.
The problem isn’t a lack of money; it’s a lack of discipline and vision. We’ve created a business climate that punishes investment: high taxes, sluggish regulatory processes, and politically motivated uncertainty. Carney has done nothing to reverse this. If anything, he’s making the situation worse.
Recall the 2008 global financial meltdown. Carney loves to highlight his role as Bank of Canada Governor during that time but the true credit for steering the country through the crisis belongs to then-prime minister Stephen Harper and his finance minister, Jim Flaherty. Facing the pressures of a minority Parliament, they made the tough decisions that safeguarded Canada’s fiscal foundation. Their disciplined governance is something Carney would do well to emulate.
Instead, he’s tearing down that legacy. His recent $4.3 billion aid pledge to Ukraine, made without parliamentary approval, exemplifies his careless approach. And his self-proclaimed image as the experienced technocrat who could go eyeball-to-eyeball against Trump is starting to crack. Instead of respecting Carney, Trump is almost toying with him, announcing in June, for example that the U.S. would pull out of the much-ballyhooed bilateral trade talks launched at the G7 Summit less than two weeks earlier.
Ordinary Canadians will foot the bill for Carney’s fiscal mess. The dollar has weakened. Young Canadians – already priced out of the housing market – will inherit a mountain of debt. This is not stewardship. It’s generational theft.
Some still believe Carney will pivot – that he will eventually govern sensibly. But nothing in his actions supports that hope. A leader serious about economic renewal would cancel wasteful Trudeau-era programs, streamline approvals for energy and resource projects, and offer incentives for capital investment. Instead, we’re getting more borrowing and ideological showmanship.
It’s no longer credible to say Carney is better than Trudeau. He’s worse. Trudeau at least pretended deficits were temporary. Carney has made them permanent – and more dangerous.
This is a betrayal of the fiscal stability Canadians were promised. If we care about our credit rating, our standard of living, or the future we are leaving our children, we must change course.
That begins by removing a government unwilling – or unable – to do the job.
Canada once set an economic example for others. Those days are gone. The warning signs – soaring debt, declining productivity, and diminished global standing – are everywhere. Carney’s defenders may still hope he can grow into the job. Canada cannot afford to wait and find out.
The original, full-length version of this article was recently published in C2C Journal.
Gwyn Morgan is a retired business leader who was a director of five global corporations.
Opinion
Charity Campaigns vs. Charity Donations

Over the past few years, I’ve had canvassers coming to my home in Toronto on behalf of a wide range of non-profits – including hospitals and mental health and homeless support organizations. The fundraisers all “wear” a noticeable post secondary student vibe. That’s hardly news.
But curiously, no matter what they’re collecting for, every last one of them uses the exact same methodology. That is, they refuse to take a one-time donation, instead insisting I sign up for six (not seven, and definitely not five) monthly payments. They don’t want me donating online through the organization’s website (explaining that they wouldn’t get credit for that). They do expect me to enter my basic information on a high-end tablet they’re carrying. When that’s done, they’ll use their smartphones to make a call to a remote agent who would take my financial information.
I only completed the process once – for the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto. But that was mostly because, at the time, they were in the middle of quite literally saving my granddaughter’s life. I couldn’t very well say no.
Because of the paranoia that comes with my background in IT systems administration, I generally don’t participate, explaining that I never share financial information on a call I didn’t initiate. At the same time, these campaigns are not fraudulent and, with the possible exception of UNICEF, they all represent legitimate organizations. Nevertheless, they all come with the clear fingerprints of a third-party, for-profit company. Which makes me curious.
After a little digging, it became clear that a company called Globalfaces Direct was the most likely employer of the face-to-face (F2F) canvassers I’m seeing. It’s also obvious that those canvassers are paid at least partially through revenue-based commissions.
Estimating how much of your donations are actually used for charitable work can be difficult. For once thing, in the case of SickKids, it’s not even clear which organization the money is going to. There at least three related non-profit accounts registered with CRA: The Hospital for Sick Children, The Hospital for Sick Children Foundation, and the SickKids Charitable Giving Fund.
But even where there isn’t such ambiguity we have only limited visibility into an organization’s finances. Covenant House, for instance, issued receipts for $26 million in donations for 2024, but there’s no way to know how much of that came through Globalfaces Direct F2F campaigns. And there’s certainly no public record indicating how much of that $26 million was spent on commissions and overhead. CRA filings for Covenant House do report fundraising costs of $9.4 million in 2024, which was 22 percent of their total spending and 32 percent of all donations.
It’s likely that their $9.4 million in fundraising costs includes Globalfaces Direct’s canvasser commissions and overhead costs. But those are only some of the costs – which likely include events, direct mail, and other in-house efforts. In fact, it’s not unreasonable to assume that only 20-30 percent of each dollar raised through F2F canvassing is actually spent on charity work.
From the perspective of the non-profit, hiring F2F companies can generate new sources of stable, long-term income that would have been otherwise unattainable. Especially if the F2F agreement specifies withholding a percentage of what’s collected rather than charging a flat fee, then a non-profit has nothing to lose. Why wouldn’t SickKids or Covenant House sign up for that?
Of course, a lot of that will depend on how you think about the numbers. Taken as a whole, an organization that spends just 32 percent of their donations on fundraising activities is well within CRA guidelines: “Fundraising is acceptable unless it is a purpose of the charity (a collateral non-charitable purpose).” But if we just looked at the money raised through a F2F campaign, that percentage would likely be a lot higher.
Similarly, CRA also expects that: “Fundraising is acceptable unless it delivers a more than incidental private benefit.” In other words, if a private company like Globalfaces Direct were to realize financial gain that’s “more than incidental”, it might fail to meet CRA guidelines.
Unfortunately, there’s no easy way for donors to assess the numbers on those terms. So regular people who prefer to direct as much of their donation as possible to the actual cause will generally be far better off donating through an institution’s website or, even better, through a single CRA-friendly aggregator like CanadaHelps.org.
But it would be nice if CRA reporting rules clearly broke those numbers down so we could judge for ourselves.
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