Canada’s premiers criticize feds, Bank of Canada over high interest rates

The premiers and territorial leaders were speaking in Winnipeg at the end of their annual meeting as the Council of the Federation, and they say Ottawa and the Bank of Canada should back off when it comes to interest rate increases.

“I’ll go on record. I’m not in favour of these rates. I’m just not. I understand what they’re doing. They’re just trying to knock down inflation. But what’s the ramification of this when these people have to renew their mortgages and they can’t afford it. This isn’t any good for the country,” Premier Doug Ford said.

In fact, the leaders say the real damage from higher interest rates is still to come.

B.C. Premier David Eby said we haven’t seen the impact yet.

“You really do have to wonder when the Bank of Canada is going to take a pause and see what the impact of this is going to be. People have not renewed their mortgages yet. Businesses struggling with debt have not started going under yet, but they will,” Eby said.

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They also accuse the federal government of helping create the inflation crisis in the first place by piling on costs like clean energy measures, including the carbon tax that adds 14 cents a litre to the cost of gas in Ontario.

“And I just wish the federal government could reduce their share of the tax and give people some relief,” Ford said.

The leaders say Ottawa should listen.

“When you layer on policy after policy after policy, there’s costs to those policies, and they’re real and they’re being felt by Canadians now,” Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said.

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Premiers from New Brunswick and Alberta said they want some recognition of the impact this is having on everyday lives.

“We are just asking for them to understand that they have put us in the position of creating an enormous affordability crisis because they keep on loading up cost after cost,” Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said.

They also say cutting back federal energy costs might help with the housing crisis.

But while Ford is focused on building 1.5 million new homes, Northwest Territories leader Caroline Cochrane suggested a different approach.

“It’s not only about building houses, it’s also about making houses affordable. We’re looking internally at what we can do on our own in terms of first time mortgages for lower income families,” Cochrane said.