The first debate of the NDP leadership campaign was held in Ottawa this afternoon and its theme was the economy.
All the questions put to the candidates were chosen by the party (not sure why two journalists — the excellent Stephen Maher and Jöel-Denis Bellavance — were chosen to be moderators given the fact that they had no role in questions or follow-ups) and, as a result, some important but difficult questions about how an NDP government would manage Canada's economy were avoided.
On one important issue, for example, we have very little information: What marching orders would an NDP government give the Bank of Canada? We heard nothing, unfortunately, about this fundamentally important issue during today's debate.
I first explored this issue last month in a column published in our newspaper chain:
“… a group of NDP MPs has been quietly signalling that a New Democratic federal government would almost certainly give new marching orders to the Bank of Canada by asking it to make jobs and wage growth the key objectives of monetary policy rather than the bank’s current obsession, keeping inflation pegged at around 2% a year.
… the NDP is signalling that it is open to changing the bank’s obsessive focus on price stability, a change that would represent one of the biggest shifts to a policy that has been a cornerstone of business planning for governments, businesses and consumers alike.
Why would the NDP do this? Because many New Democrats and, quite probably, many other Canadians, think low inflation should not be the end-all and be-all for central banks and governments. Instead, full employment should be the overriding goal of both monetary and fiscal policy.
In other words, who cares about 2% inflation if you don’t have a decent job?
“Monetary policy has absolutely exacerbated increasing inequality in society,” Jim Stanford, the economist for the Canadian Auto Workers, told the Commons finance committee . . .
You can read the transcript of that Commons finance committee here. While no NDP leadership candidates are sitting on that committee, the lead NDP MP on Finance is Peter Julian, a senior and influential New Democrat. Reading between the lines of his contribution and the contribution of other New Democrats at this meeting, it seems that, at the very least, the NDP would like to re-examine the role of Bank of Canada in Canada's economy. And that, alone, should make it more of a focus in the current NDP leadership debate.