Canadian Government: CBDCs Allow For “visibility and traceability” Of Citizens’ Transactions

CONTEXT:  Payments Canada is a government-created corporation that operates a payment clearing and payment settlement system, but also facilities the creation of new payment methods and technologies. This is why Payments Canada has published several papers on the use of CBDCs for both retail and wholesale purposes. 

In a paper published by Payments Canada back in 2021, they admit that a lot of the perceived negatives for Canadians’ privacy posed by Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) are seen as a positive by the Canadian government.

In the paper, there are several troubling statements made by Payment’s Canada about the function of CBDCs.

At one point they state:

Widespread adoption of retail CBDCs can help the issuing central bank maintain control over monetary policy transmission dependent on the design of the CBDC itself…A retail CBDC could also provide visibility and traceability of transactions, allowing for more informed monetary policy-making decisions. In addition to enhancing monetary policy transmission, a CBDC can also help the central bank maintain their sovereignty as third party PSPs and alternative currency adoption rises in popularity.

It is rather obvious why a statement like “A retail CBDC could also provide visibility and traceability of transactions” would raise alarm bells in the minds of Canadians concerned about privacy from the government, but a later point in the statement should seem equally egregious. 

The notion that the Central Bank needs to “maintain their sovereignty” in the face of private payment service providers is ridiculous as Canada’s Central Bank already has too much power over Canadian’s financial health. Private payment service providers have also acted as a barrier to the government simply gaining access to records of everything you purchase, and yet Payments Canada acts as if those companies have a “monopoly” despite that being what a CBDC would grant the government. 

It is telling that in the minds of those who work for a government corporation like payments Canada that payment processing being purely done by several companies in the private sector constitutes a potential “monopoly.” 

Later in the same paper, Payments Canada pushes the idea that CBDCs will effectively allow for more central planning and development of the economy.

They explain at one point that:

CBDC deployment would minimize the amount of infrastructure and third party involvement needed in order to successfully drive towards a fully developed economy.

Again this is a Canadian government corporation spinning more government control as a positive thing while having previously derided the idea that the private sector currently manages payment processing. They fearmonger at one point that private processors could sell information about their customers’ purchasing habits, but a CBDC would allow the government access to all your transactions in real-time. 

Pair that idea with the concept of a personal Environmental, Social, and Governmental score (ESG score), and a CBDC could turn authoritarian fairly quickly if the government starts attempting to fiscally punish certain behaviours by levying taxes directly on certain types of purchases. 

In a similar vein to the fear-mongering over private firms selling information, Payments Canada also acts as if physical cash is too clunky of a medium of payment for our modern world and that it fuels the “underground economy” which may be partly true but does not justify taking away Canadians right to physical posses currency. 

Payments Canada literally started the section of the paper about cash by saying, “A disproportionately high use of cash can also have negative implications.”

On top of all that, one other troubling thing mentioned in the paper is how Payments Canada uses the Communist government in China’s experimentation with a CBDC in one of their regions as an example of how they can be effectively implemented. They neglect to mention how China’s CBDC (digital Yuan) is tied into their social credit system, allowing the government to confiscate funds or freeze your ability to make purchases if you find yourself on the wrong side of the Communist Party.

Overall this paper gives a clear insight into the Big Government mindset of those in the Canadian government who favour the use of a CBDC. The fact that in the 2022 Liberal government budget they have allocated $17 million to study the implementation of a CBDC should cause alarm bells to sound in the minds of Canadians who value their financial freedom.