With today’s fiscal update, the Trudeau government has really shown itself to be at the forefront of global left neoliberalism. Taking nearly all his cues from his business-dominated Advisory Council on Economic Growth, the Finance Minister announced a new Canada Infrastructure Bank as the centerpiece of the fiscal update and the Liberals’ economic strategy. Don’t believe the fanfare that is bound to come from the Canadian and international press, this isn’t anything progressive. It’s a new elite consensus that might become one of our main exports, pumped via virtual pipelines across the globe.
Here’s how Dominic Barton, the managing director of McKinsey Global, one of the world’s largest business consulting firms and head of the Advisory Council, framed the impetus behind the new bank:
Barton said infrastructure aimed at improving productivity will be of huge interest to foreign investors in search of steady returns with record low or negative interest rates in many parts of the world. “Infrastructure is the new fixed income,” Barton said in a speech over dinner at the conference. The mix of public and private capital has the potential to “jolt the system.”