The federal Conservative Party is calling for an audit of the Bank of Canada’s bond buying program and greater parliamentary oversight of the central bank.
Andrew Scheer, who led the Conservatives between 2017 and 2019, has introduced a private member’s bill that would remove the Bank of Canada’s exemption from scrutiny by the nation’s auditor general.
Speaking in the House of Commons, the Saskatchewan Member of Parliament (MP) said the move would allow for “performance audits,” citing the central-bank’s purchasing of government and corporate bonds during the COVID-19 pandemic.
While private member’s bills have a low likelihood of passage, the move underscores the extent to which relations between the central bank and the Conservative Party have become frayed. Inflation running at three-decade highs appears to be only stoking those tensions.
In 2020, Conservative lawmaker Pierre Poilievre — a front-runner to become new leader of the party after last week’s ouster of Scheer’s successor, Erin O’Toole — claimed the central bank’s asset-purchase program risked turning into an “ATM” for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s political agenda.
The Bank of Canada responded, many times, by saying it needed to buy up government debt through the pandemic to prevent a pick-up in interest rates that would have crippled the economy at a difficult time.
Currently, the Bank of Canada’s books are scrutinized by external auditors appointed by the federal government’s cabinet.
The Bank of Canada’s balance sheet peaked in March 2021 when it hit $575 billion, but it’s come down since as short-term securities matured. The central bank still holds about $430 billion in federal government bonds, which is up about $350 billion since the start of the pandemic.