Bank of Canada pushing stimulus; Conservatives, NDP talking austerity. Go figure
The idea that a prime minister is the “steward of the economy” is a convenient bit of fiction, co-created by politicians and the journalists who cover them.
It was an explicit theme of last night’s leaders’ debate; at one point, the moderator actually asked NDP leader Tom Mulcair “why should the electorate hand the national economy over to you?”
- Federal leaders trade pointed barbs during economy debate
- Spin Cycle: Is the NDP’s corporate tax hike a ‘job’s killer’?
- Follow CBC’s complete election coverage
This notion is convenient to prime ministers because of their need to appear in charge of everything; convenient to opposition leaders, who need to assign blame for everything; and convenient to those journalists who thrive on reductive, easily digestible notions that smell like truisms.
In reality, though, a prime minister gets to decide how federal spending is allocated, and federal spending accounts for roughly 15 per cent of the $1.8-trillion Canadian economy.
Actually, even that is too sweeping: the prime minister decides how a portion of that 15 per cent is spent.
Most federal spending is structurally entrenched (entitlement programs, equalization payments, transfers to provinces, etc.) or politically entrenched.
Enter Stephen Poloz
Still, there is one Canadian official who probably does deserve the steward-of-the-economy title. It’s almost his job description, but you won’t hear much about him during this campaign, because he isn’t running for election, and because most people have only a dim understanding of what he does. He went unmentioned in last night’s economic debate.
But Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz not only has the unilateral power to change the financial circumstances of almost every Canadian tomorrow, he is almost certainly considering at the moment whether he should use it.
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