this was supposed to be a green infrastructure bank, and it was supposed to be a subsidiary of the bank of canada that operated on printed money, much as previous infrastructure banks did in the country's history - all of them created by the liberals.

so, it was a reasonable election promise, in the context of the broad election theme of canada being "back". they were admittedly vague, but it was easy enough to fill in the blanks with the historical policy that previously existed.

in the early 70s, the elder trudeau dismantled this infrastructure system under international pressure to move to private borrowing as a part of the collapse of the bretton woods system (it was a local consequence of the nixon shock). frankly, i suspect that he would have reversed that choice when faced with the kind of inflation that mulroney walked into in the mid-80s. as it is, mulroney did not reverse that decision, but chose to let the debt balloon out of control, and then shift taxes from producers to consumers in order to compensate. and, both his career and his party were utterly destroyed as a consequence of this rather brutal fiscal mismanagement.

unfortunately, the new trudeau government has not been about making canada great again, but has rather been a full pivot to a type of neo-liberalism that we haven't seen here before. what was supposed to be a way to fund a fast transition ended up distorted into another way for the banks to make money from public interest.

it's funny how they spin it as a way to reduce public spending, though. that's priceless.

so, i would expect the conservatives to shut something like this down, but i would hope that the ndp would be focused more on converting it into it's stated goal, and it's disappointing that they're more interested in falling into right-wing populist rhetoric about big banks, instead. that won't win them votes, here.

but, this is certainly an issue where voters should punish the liberals for being not just dishonest and misleading but flatly hard-headed and kind of stupid. they ran on something quite specific that is really the only serious answer to the climate crisis, something that was believable to implement and would benefit the country dramatically, and then did almost the exact opposite of what they said they would in a way that will make the country more expensive and less livable. they should get hurt at the polls for that.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/infrastructure-bank-looks-to-avoid-distraction-from-election-talk-ceo-says-1.4535567