Tories push Trudeau for plan to lure crypto investment
BNN Bloomberg
A Conservative lawmaker wants Justin Trudeau’s government to start taking cryptocurrency seriously, recommending his finance minister begin setting up a national framework to woo investors.
A Conservative lawmaker wants Justin Trudeau’s government to start taking cryptocurrency seriously, recommending his finance minister begin setting up a national framework to woo investors.
The proposal by Michelle Rempel Garner is Canada’s first legislative foray into the increasingly popular asset class. Though the nation “should be attracting billions of dollars of investment in this fast-growing industry,” it’s instead losing talent to Europe and the U.S., she said in a statement.
A so-called private member’s bill, the law Rempel Garner proposed Wednesday has a low probability of being adopted by the government. But it comes on the heels of a similar call from a top finance executive.
Mike Katchen, chief executive and co-founder of Wealthsimple Financial Inc., told a business luncheon last month Canadian policy makers should “plant a flag” on crypto as part of their efforts to diversify the nation’s resource-heavy economy.
The bill also comes amid increasing scrutiny of digital currencies in Canada due to fundraising in Bitcoin by some organizers of the trucker convoy that’s been occupying Ottawa for nearly two weeks. The protests against vaccine mandates and other Covid-19 restrictions have spread in recent days to key U.S. border crossings like the Ambassador Bridge into Detroit.
Rempel Garner said the increasingly divisive discussion around crypto is worrying, particularly since understanding of the issue -- a relatively new and deeply complicated one -- doesn’t yet run deep among lawmakers.
