May 03, 2008

follow-up to the Bill C-50 issue, on the financial aspects.

Parliament's Finance Committee meets on Monday to talk about these amendments, with a representative of the C.D.Howe Institute which proposed them.
Not only would the changes mean that the Bank of Canada could pick up speculative capital, but the Bank's Governor could do so without having any kind of discussion with any elected representatives, unless they happened to pick up the Gazette on the right day, and decided to have a chat over coffee or send in a comment online...
So the public monies that we so desperately need for critical basic human and ecosystem function will be allowed to be put up in the global gambling hall, and we won't even find out when or with how many of our dollars it happens, unless we read the Gazette. Then we'll get to send in an online comment...
It would be good if we could use the same contact info that we used for the earlier C-50 callout, and press to eliminate the amendments to the Bank of Canada Act in Bill C50.
thanks,
Leigh
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Part 10 from Parliament's website on Bill C-50 is the section on Bank of Canada Act amendments (copied below)
By voting this amendment through, parliamentarians will be voting away their own finance committee's oversight, allowing the Bank of Canada governor to simply post a note to the Gazette when it wants to do some day trading ! This was the same mechanism used to slip through some of the sub-standard food regulations. Now substandard debt. Could be a tad more expensive.
Instead of C.D.Howe's Poschmann's speculations on speculators' reactions in the Financial Post to such Gazette postings,
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/05/01/empowering-the-bank.aspx why don't we simply refuse to amend the Bank of Canada Act, and retain Parliamentary Finance Committee oversight ?
Hopefully this is stating the obvious to folks. Really, I find it bizarre that we are even in a position where these proposals are being seriously entertained.

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