I was on the CBC News‘ Weekend Business Panel this Saturday, speaking about three topics:

1. The Canada Post Strike: The company is in dismal financial status, with seven years of losses, each year beating the next. The company wants to turn more into an Amazon-like delivery service, with contractors delivering parcels over the weekend, while the union wishes for their members to get paid overtime for these deliveries. Both of these requirements are unrealistic. Canada Post functions in a highly competitive environment, one where labour laws are many times overlooked. A solution must come via rethinking what is as modern post service that reaches rural and urban Canadians, possibly some reforms to the labour code to protect delivery workers across companies and provide a level playing field, and a more lean, efficient post office that delivers services as Canadian need them. Otherwise, the crown corporation is, in my opinion, doomed.

2. The GST holiday and the $200 incentive: This is a terrible policy. At best, it displaces consumption and reduces the fiscal arks with limited economic impact. At worst, it compounds an inflationary environment given the promised increased expenses by the incoming US president. If the latter occurs, then the BoC will react and either stay further rate cuts or, in a more extreme situation, increase the interest rate, eliminating any impact. This is a populist measure that has, sadly, proven quite popular by Doug Ford’s similar measures.

3. The latest inflation numbers: They were squarely in the BoC’s estimates, so nothing serious here. I do believe that the BoC hast to be cautious about the future. Donald Trump’s protectionist and expansionary policies may lead to an even weaker CAD, thus the risk of importing inflation in the future is high. The BoC must be thinking carefully whether they can keep cutting the interest rate or should they wait to see the impact of Trudeau’s, Ford’s and Trump’s policies.

Give it a watch below! This is my last panel of the year. I come back live on January 18th.