Oh, I guess it's all virtual. I hope everybody's comfortable at home.
We are unfortunately in the same position we were at. I heard that there's been no real subcommittee meeting since the last meeting. From my perspective, it seems like the committee was asked to slightly adjust its protocol to do a prestudy, which has happened before. Typically, as precedent has been, at least to my understanding, when that happens there's a bit of a negotiation about how we can agree to set some protocol aside to allow a prestudy, which seems reasonable. Many members of the committee, I think, believed there was a reasonable compromise, and yet that doesn't seem to be palatable for the government.
For the benefit of others, we just had an inflation reading today. Inflation is three times the Bank of Canada's target rate of 2%. It's been that way for well over a year. If the committee is going to continue to push forward the government legislation in a reasonable fashion, the committee should also expect that the executive branch be accountable for its decisions and the outcomes, and what's happening in the economy. Quite frankly, it is entirely reasonable, and should even just be as a matter of practice, that on a regular basis, outside any appearances on legislation, both the Bank of Canada governor and the finance minister appear at the committee at least multiple times a year.
In times of inflation, prolonged inflation, I would think it would make a lot of sense for Canadians to feel that their executive branch and those policy-makers are being held accountable for literally the only thing they're supposed to do, which is to keep inflation between 1% and 3%. When it is not within 1% to 3%, I think it would make sense to have the Bank of Canada governor come every time the bank releases a monetary policy report to say, “Here's the target. Here's what we're doing to bring it back to target”, so that we can hold institutions accountable. The bank governor has been willing to come to this committee before, and I thank him for that. I don't think he would be upset with the request to come on a more regular basis. The challenge here is that theMinister of Finance doesn't want to appear before the committee on inflation.
We passed a study on inflation 12 months ago that asked for the minister to come to appear on inflation, and she has yet to appear at the committee on that. But she wants to come when we require her to pass her legislation. She is quite happy to come to the committee when the minister needs something, and was not happy to come when all of the committee members who passed the inflation study requested the presence of the minister.
The compromise, I actually think, is quite reasonable: While inflation is outside the control range, and until it comes back down, every three months this committee, and Canadians, get to hear from and question and hold accountable the Minister of Finance and the Bank of Canada governor on what they are doing to get inflation back down. It is the only job of the Bank of Canada, and it's the Minister of Finance who sets the Bank of Canada's mandate. Don't you think the Minister of Finance would love the opportunity to come in front of Canadians to talk about what the government is doing to help Canadians with inflation? I think it seems rather odd that as we're entering a period of economic uncertainty, the minister is interested in hiding from Canadians. She's not interested in actually standing in front of the committee and answering for the record.
There's all this discussion in the media and among the elite chattering classes about populism and its going after institutions. The way we hold institutions accountable is at committees like this. The way we give the public confidence about our institutions is when we can hold them accountable and when we can hold the members of the executive accountable.
That's how we hold these institutions accountable—in public and by asking questions. Every three months is quite a reasonable ask, actually, in my view. I would think most ministers who are in that position would want the opportunity to tell the story of the government.