Canada will organize an election next week, where voters will consider a variety of problems (the economy, housing, commercial relations with the United States, since they choose their elected officials, who in turn will choose the next prime minister of the country.
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The narrative
Crypto is not an important electoral problem during this year’s Canadian elections. None of the main candidates for prime minister has campaigned in digital assets, but this is how they have discussed the issue in the past.
Why does it matter
Canada had infamously massive collapses of cryptographic exchange in recent years, which led to concerted efforts of its provincial regulators to promulgate railings in the digital asset industry. While exchanges such as Coinbase ask for policies such as a working group from the Canadian government or a Bitcoins reserve, so far the main candidates for the prime minister seem to have other problems in their minds (namely: relations and trade in the United States, housing and economy).
Break down
When the Canadians go to the polls next Monday, they will choose their member of Parliament. The party with most seats will form the new government of the country, and the leader of that party will become the new prime minister.
While the conservative party and its leader Pierre Poilievre maintained comfortable protagonists in the vote averages at the end of January 2025, the Liberal Party saw a mass increase in popularity after the president of the United States, Donald Trump, announced tariffs with Canada (and most other countries). The Liberal Party, now with leader Mark Carney, has had a significant advantage since then, according to voting data and Polymarket. Carney assumed the position of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as leader of the Liberal Party last month.
Pierre Poilievre
Pailievre is a Bitcoin and Blockchain defender who has led the conservative party since September 2022. He has actions in a background quoted by Bitcoin Exchange (ETF). In 2022, he promised to turn Canada into the “capital of the world of Blockchain and Crypto” during a campaign speech (a phrase that Trump later used on the path of the 2024 campaign).
“I want to eliminate control of the money from politicians and bankers, and return it to people,” he said. “We need to give people the freedom to choose another money. If the government will abuse our cash, we should have the right to choose to use another higher quality cash.”
He even bought Shawarma using Bitcoin during his campaign for the leader of the Conservative Party, discussing digital assets in a 30 -minute interview with the restaurant owner.
He supported the protest of a truck driver of Canada, who called herself the “convoy of freedom” in early 2022 to object a vaccine mandate for any truck driver that cross the border between the United States and Canada. At that time, the Canadian government sought to freeze financial support for protesters, even sanctioning cryptographic wallets linked to truckers.
While Poilievre does not seem to have specifically linked Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies to truckers who may have lost bank access, he called Bitcoin “the most important asset he could possess.”
Pailievre has also opposed the investigation of the Bank of Canada in a digital currency of the Central Bank, arguing that it could violate privacy rights or allow legislators to be benefits for supporters. Last year he supported a bill that would have prohibited a Canadian CBDC directly (echoing the US Republicans who have done the same here).
Canadian magazine Maclean’s reported that, although Pailievre has said less about cryptography in recent days, the conservative party as a whole still tends to support the industry, citing several members of Parliament who have introduced bills or discussed in another way crypt.
Pailievre seemed to discuss Crypto publicly less after FTX’s dramatic collapse in 2022, that his political opponents used to issue warnings about his prior defense for digital assets. Pailievre can also take into account Trump’s unpopularity in Canada, and try to distance themselves from the policies that can imitate the president of the United States.
Mark Carny
Carney was the head of the Bank of Canada and then the Bank of England. While he has not said much about Bitcoin, he did give a speech about the “future of money” in London in March 2018, where he criticized the use of digital assets, citing speculative mania and the lack of suppliers willing to accept it as a payment tool.
“The long charitable response is that cryptocurrencies act as money, in the best case, only for some people and to a limited degree, and even then only in parallel with the traditional coins of the users,” he said. “The short answer is that they are failing.”
Carney pointed out the performance of the transaction, the ease of access and other problems such as barriers for the adoption of digital assets, but said that his concerns with digital assets at that time “were not destined to rule out them.”
“Its main technology is already having an impact. Bringing cryptoassets to the regulatory store could catalyze innovations to better serve the public,” he said. “Cryptomyned are an attempt to create financial architecture for peer transactions. Even if the current generation is not the answer, the glove is yielding to the existing payment systems. They must now evolve to meet the demands of transactions distributed totally reliable, in real and distributed time.”
Carney praised the distributed accounting books in particular, and suggested that existing digital asset infrastructure could lead to the creation of a digital currency of the central bank, although he said that “there are also broader social questions” about issues such as privacy if a central bank pursues a CBDC.
Just over a year later, in the economic policy symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Carney suggested that a global hegemonic digital currency backed by digital currencies of the Central Bank could reinforce the world economy against the role of the dollar.
“The influence of the dollar in global financial conditions could decrease similarly if a financial architecture was developed around the new [Synthetic Hegemonic Currency] and displaced the domain of the dollar in credit markets, “he said in August 2019.” By reducing the influence of the United States in the global financial cycle, this would help reduce the volatility of capital flows to Emes. “
Friday
- 17:00 UTC (1:00 PM ET) The United States stock and values commission will have the latest cryptographic round tables, this time focusing on custody issues.
- (The New York Times) The Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegesh, had another group chat where he shared details about an imminent military strike in Yemen. Unlike the signal chat that included the Atlantic Chief Editor, Hegseth himself established this group and included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, The Times reported. Later, NBC reported that the information about the strike came from a message sent by an army general through “a safe system of the United States.”
- (Reuters) Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation plans to say goodbye to a fifth of its employees, or 1,250 people, he told his staff according to Reuters.
- (AP news) The consumer financial protection office announced that it would fire 1,500 employees, but this movement has been arrested by the American district judge Amy Berman Jackson.
- (The New York Times) Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat who represents Maryland, met Kilmar Abrego García in El Salvador. Abrego García was unfairly sent to El Salvador to be imprisoned without a trial or audience, and the administration of the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bikele, tried to organize the photos of his meeting with Van Hollen by placing glasses “with cherries and salty tires” for photos, the Times reported.
If you have thoughts or questions about what I should discuss next week or any other comments you want to share, do not hesitate to send me an email to [email protected] or find myself at bluesky @nikhileshde.bsky.social.
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Look, next week!
