Canadian candidate for prime minister Pierre Poilivere has been an active promoter of Bitcoin and Lightning. Could he bring bitcoin adoption in Canada forward if his campaign succeeds?
There’s a hole in our bucket, according to Pierre Poilivere. The Canadian politician explained the effects of inflation during a podcast interview earlier this year by saying, “Work is meant to go with reward. Money is the way of transporting today’s work into tomorrow’s reward. So if in transporting that money it’s losing value, then we are de-linking our labor from its reward. It would be like having a bucket. You go down to the river and fill it with water but it’s leaking, so that by the time you actually get back to your house, it’s half empty.”
A sitting member of Parliament from a riding only a half hour drive from the Canadian capital is currently in the race to lead his party as the official opposition and challenge the ruling government to become Prime Minister. A central component to his platform that he hopes will draw new members to the party and resonate with hard working Canadians is a critique of modern monetary policy. On the podcast with well-known Bitcoiner Robert Breedlove, Poilivere dismantles the effects of inflation and declares, “You cannot tax what the people have not approved…what inflation does is it allows Presidents, Prime Ministers, kings, dictators etc. to basically break that 800 year convention that goes back to the Magna Carta of 1215.”
Much of that conversation will resonate with Bitcoin News readers, as it covers the subjects of personal freedom and the workings of money in the fiat system. Pierre Poilivere summarizes the true and long-lasting cost of inflation saying, “Inflation punishes savers and rewards spenders and as a result we get more spending and less saving. We are constantly up to our eyeballs in debt and on the verge of these repeating debt crises that seem to strike our economies once every fifteen to twenty years.” While the conversation does not turn into an outright endorsement of Bitcoin, throughout his campaign Poilivere has responded to questions about bitcoin by affirming the need for strong money. He declares that he will oppose a Canadian Central Bank Digital Currency and claims it is a tool for government overreach. Instead he commends the value of a decentralized system, like Bitcoin.
Uncharacteristically for a modern politician, Poilivere is prepared to deal openly with some of the philosophical assumptions about money that are often taken for granted. Recently a speech that he gave during a sitting of the Canadian Parliament can be watched on his Facebook page that asks the question, what is money? His twenty minute answer is peppered with stories and comical diggs at his political opponents including a sarcastic retelling of a meeting where the parliamentary finance committee proposed $7B (CAD) of spending and when asked, where does that money come from? Were only able to produce a vague and confounding label of a “broader macro economic framework” as the source of funding the massive expenditure.
At the time of this writing (the beginning of May 2022), the Conservative Party has announced the final list of candidates for the leadership race. In Canadian politics the party leader is decided by a vote of the members of the party. Membership costs $15 and can be acquired on the party’s website in minutes. This September the leader will be decided by a mail-in voting system. Pierre Poilivere is running against five other party leader hopefuls. Whomever emerges the victor will guide the party towards the next federal election currently expected to be in 2025.
During a recent campaign stop at the Holiday Inn of St. Catharines, Ontario. Pierre Poilivere was met with an energetic room of support. The large crowd was described as working age, friendly and hopeful. As the evening went on, cheers erupted at the minister’s promise to defund the CBC, a government backed media organization. It is still a long road for Poilivere to sit down at the Prime Minister’s Office and begin passing Canadian law, but should that occur, it may mean that Bitcoin has a friend in Ottawa.
