The extension of Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) for an extra six months is one of the major causes of the current high inflation, according to Erin O’Toole, former Leader of the Conservative Party and member of Parliament from Durham Riding.
“A year and a half ago when we started raising the alarm bell on inflation, the (Prime Minister Justin) Trudeau government ignored it. And, when inflation started coming up, they said it was transitory, they said it was temporary,” O’Toole told Durham Post.
He said there were two reasons for inflation – there was excessive spending by the government and too much money in circulation, and that is his (Trudeau’s) fault.
“They extended the CERB for six months longer than it should have been. That should have been temporary in the worst of the pandemic when we thought the economy was going to collapse. It should have been rolled back,” said O’Toole.
Students given CERB
“It should never have been provided for students. We spent hundreds of millions of dollars for 15-year-olds living at home with their parents to collect the CERB. It is a cause of inflation, and it has also changed our labour force…it has changed the culture. The over-spending part of the inflationary problem is 100 per cent Justin Trudeau’s fault,” said the Conservative stalwart.
He said on the wider supply chain shortages he wrote to the Prime Minister about a year ago asking him to coordinate efforts on everything from microchips, semiconductors, steel, and aluminium with the United States.
“We need to get back to that integrated Canada-US market. I don’t call it North American because for some of this technology Mexico is a labour source, not a high tech and IT source. We should really get back to that – solving supply-chain crunches together, including for the electric vehicles (EV). Critical minerals should come from Canada, not China, not Russia – and this is another issue I’ve been advocating for many years. The U.S. needs our support for these resources,” said O’Toole.
He said Canada could have been tackling supply-chain with the United States, but was hopeful that it is slowly going to sort itself out after China resumes normal shipping.
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bullshit. Corporations are trying to recover lost profits. The proof is in OECD statistics that inflation is world wide, and non of the other countries had our Liberal government. This is the typical conservative white washing and blame shifting we have always seen. I cannot imagine having to live through Covid with a Conservative government after seeing all they have said. A lot of us would not be here now.