Dear Editor
It is most interesting to see the new Liberal government of Justin Trudeau recruiting an investment banker to help design its planned “Canada Infrastructure Bank.”
Outside of putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop, has our government forgotten that we have a bank cut out to do just such a job?
It’s called the Bank of Canada, our publicly owned bank which, until 1974, loaned money to federal, provincial and municipal governments at no or low interest.
Created in 1938, during the Great Depression, the Bank of Canada funded a wide range of projects such as the Trans Canada Highway system, the St. Lawrence Seaway, universities, hospitals and infrastructure projects.
The question is, why do we continue to be fleeced by private and foreign lenders?
According to the Toronto based Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform (COMER), they have a case before the courts demanding that we go back to our 1974 mandate, which is legal and constitutional, so that we stop paying $30 to $40 billion dollars a year to private banks in unnecessary interest, which from 1974, has cost us an estimated $2 trillion dollars.
It is especially duplicitous and hypocritical when financial institutions call on our bank, the Bank of Canada, to bail them out when they run into financial problems.
Bill Zander, New Westminster
