Western Standard - July 18, 2026


Canadians must keep the right to use cash

Topics
cash and digital payments
Mentioned
Mark Carney Bill C-63 Justin Trudeau Pierre Poilievre Ted Falk COVID-19
Hands off Alberta's electricity HANNAFORD： Hands off Alberta's electricity

Episode Stats


Length

22 minutes

Words per minute

157.18

Word count

3,611

Sentence count

136


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Bill C-276 would require the Minister of Finance to establish a national framework on the continued access to and use of cash in our country. It also would prevent the Bank of Canada from developing a central bank digital currency, and the third thing it will do is take away the ability of cabinet to remove physical currency from circulation.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 I'm Willie Temtem with the Western Standard here in Ottawa outside of Parliament Hill where I had
00:00:09.360 the chance to speak with Conservative Member of Parliament Ted Falk on his new Private Members
00:00:13.840 Bill C-276. The bill is targeted towards removing the Finance Minister's right to melt currency,
00:00:21.440 physical currency that is, so cash and coins from circulation, and protect Canadians' rights to use
00:00:27.760 cash and of course that would create a national framework and study how to create that framework
00:00:33.040 to protect the canadian's right to use cash in all transactions i had a few questions for him
00:00:38.240 he really had to say i'm joined with member of parliament ted falk ted thank you for making time
00:00:44.000 to speak with the western standard so ted you're introducing a private member's bill on central
00:00:50.400 bank digital currency can you tell us more what that actually means yeah well the bill is actually
00:00:55.680 It does three things, and it's a bill that will require the Minister of Finance to establish a national framework on the continued access to and use of cash in our country.
00:01:10.720 That's the very first thing it does, so it would mean that a national framework would have to be established.
00:01:17.260 And the second thing it'll do is it would prevent the Bank of Canada from developing a central bank digital currency.
00:01:22.680 And the third thing it will do is it will take away the ability of cabinet to remove physical currency from circulation, which is something that under the Justin Trudeau era, they gave themselves the power to do.
00:01:38.460 So let's talk about the timing of this. Why are you bringing this bill now? What's the call of effect for it?
00:01:45.320 You know, the interesting thing was it's something that was tweaked in my own personal life about three years ago when I took my grandson to an NHL hockey game to watch the Winnipeg Jets and I wanted to buy him a hot dog and a pop.
00:02:02.520 And I went to one of the vendors in the Canada Life Centre at that time and tried to do that and I presented them with a $20 bill to pay for the hot dog and the pop, which by the way just barely would have covered it.
00:02:15.320 Some of these venue concession stands are very expensive, but they said that they weren't accepting any cash.
00:02:25.980 And I said, well, then I'll just go check with one of the other vendors.
00:02:29.620 And they said, well, none of us accept cash. We're completely digital.
00:02:34.200 And I thought, wow, well, that's interesting.
00:02:36.360 And I mean, I did have a means to pay by way of credit card, and so I chose to do that.
00:02:42.080 You could have used either debit or credit.
00:02:44.480 But I thought to myself, well, that's interesting.
00:02:46.620 We have a currency in this country, which is legal tender.
00:02:49.720 And when merchants refused to accept that, I got a problem with that
00:02:53.260 because that was my preferred choice of payment was to use cash.
00:02:58.320 And so I thought I need to work on this and find out what's what.
00:03:01.580 So ideally, I would have liked to have presented a bill
00:03:05.240 that would require individuals, businesses, merchants to accept cash
00:03:10.860 as legal tender if presented.
00:03:13.600 Unfortunately, that's outside of the federal purview. Establishing a national framework is not, but to mandate that on vendors and businesses and merchants or individuals is a provincial jurisdiction issue.
00:03:30.160 And so that's something that provinces would then have to adopt.
00:03:32.680 So I think one of the ways to address that is to establish a framework at the federal level, which then provinces will either adopt or build on.
00:03:41.200 Well, let's talk about the human behavior for a second.
00:03:43.600 On a societal level, video games, movies, even forms of payment are all moving in one direction and it's digital.
00:03:52.640 So do you think you have the public's best interests or do you have any public support behind this effort?
00:03:58.820 Given the fact that we'll raise those concerns on central bank digital currencies specifically,
00:04:04.120 but the process of digitalization or adopting technologies to make things more efficient from a digital means
00:04:10.600 seems to be quite popular with society on a number of fronts.
00:04:14.120 Absolutely, and society has been moving in that direction.
00:04:17.940 Many people have adopted digital forms of payment,
00:04:22.400 whether it's credit card or debit card or digital currencies like cryptocurrencies.
00:04:29.000 So those are all becoming more popular, but there's still a segment of the population,
00:04:32.940 especially among underprivileged people that prefer to use cash
00:04:38.080 and the people that are in marginalized communities, most of them rely on cash.
00:04:43.160 A lot of the elderly rely on cash.
00:04:46.620 People in difficult personal relationship positions and situations rely on cash
00:04:52.120 as a safeguard for them to be able to function.
00:04:57.440 But I understand the motivation behind digital currency.
00:05:01.620 It's convenient and it works really well as long as you've got two things,
00:05:05.180 as long as you've got electricity and as long as you have access to the internet.
00:05:08.780 But outside of that, if there's a failure in either one of those systems,
00:05:12.140 either the internet or electrical grid, you can't use a digital form of currency.
00:05:18.000 And so there should always be a backstop of cash as a means of conducting financial transactions.
00:05:25.980 And anything that's digital, and people obviously have chosen that their personal autonomy
00:05:33.020 is not as important as perhaps convenience
00:05:36.660 and receiving benefits from a reward system.
00:05:40.460 And I think financial institutions, for the most part,
00:05:42.460 have done a very good job of capturing market share
00:05:45.020 by offering a reward system
00:05:46.820 for people using their form of digital payment.
00:05:49.480 You're referring to banks with cashbacks.
00:05:53.020 Cashback, credit card points,
00:05:55.420 and merchandise, travel, cashback, all of those things.
00:05:59.060 People like those programs,
00:06:00.460 Whether it's the airlines or the different banks or even merchant programs, those are very popular with people.
00:06:08.100 And they incentivize people to conduct a certain behavior.
00:06:12.740 And one is to be loyal to a particular vendor or service provider or to accumulate cashback points or merchandise or travel points.
00:06:23.920 And so those are popular and people have responded and are willing to do that.
00:06:28.700 that comes with a personal sacrifice of individual privacy because the big prize for many of these
00:06:39.120 things is the collection of data right the collection of your habits the collection of
00:06:44.160 personal information keeping a record of your of your financial transactions that's not just
00:06:51.580 one and done that's stored on a database somewhere and I don't think everybody recognizes that and
00:06:56.500 And if you're comfortable with that, it's not a problem.
00:06:58.940 But there are some people that are not comfortable with reams and volumes of financial transaction
00:07:05.360 data being kept on themselves.
00:07:08.280 So you mentioned the specific constituency there, talking about vulnerable people.
00:07:11.880 I know your bill's media language highlights vulnerable groups like seniors, remote communities
00:07:18.680 and even domestic abuse victims.
00:07:21.000 And of course, the statement that your bill's text is used is that cash is the only truly
00:07:28.340 anonymous form of payment.
00:07:31.240 So given that your bill is trying to create this framework, this national framework that
00:07:35.860 perhaps provinces can adopt, what exactly are the laws or penalties that would be applied
00:07:42.260 to companies or merchants for denying or for insisting that they go cashless?
00:07:48.380 Well, that is not encompassed in this bill.
00:07:50.640 This bill is just requiring the Minister of Finance to establish a framework.
00:07:56.600 And so that framework would be established by the Minister with any corresponding rewards or penalties.
00:08:03.520 So that this bill does not address.
00:08:06.020 Sure, but do you have anything in mind in terms of what you'd want that to be, that framework that you're mentioning?
00:08:12.560 I think the most important part is that there is a framework that will guarantee continued access to and the ability to use cash in our country.
00:08:23.540 So imagine that being something like a fine.
00:08:26.340 That's something the finance minister of the day is going to have to figure out.
00:08:29.580 What's going to work?
00:08:31.640 What would be an applicable consequence or reward for people to live by?
00:08:42.560 whatever policy has established.
00:08:44.160 The finance minister of the day is François-Philippe Champagne,
00:08:46.660 who is sitting now in a liberal majority government.
00:08:49.040 Do you expect much from this?
00:08:51.900 Yeah, I'm getting traction from...
00:08:55.300 This isn't a partisan issue.
00:08:58.060 I'm getting traction on this whole issue from lots of people.
00:09:02.780 Including liberals?
00:09:04.180 Including some of my liberal colleagues that I've spoken to.
00:09:06.740 They're certainly not opposed to it,
00:09:07.920 and they can see that there's an applicable place for people to have cash.
00:09:12.560 they've all experienced situations where they've needed to have cash where for whatever reason
00:09:18.160 their their debit or credit card hasn't worked and if they want to conduct a certain financial
00:09:22.880 transaction like maybe buying a cup of coffee or or paying for their groceries at the checkout
00:09:27.920 they would have needed cash to do that yeah sure um so again in the text that we build expresses
00:09:34.720 that intends to seek a creation of a safeguard for cash infrastructure you know which includes
00:09:44.280 obviously all the equipment and facilities required to maintain you know circulation of cash
00:09:48.980 and my question to you ted is you know and again revisiting where we are today in an era of digital
00:09:55.880 finance technology domination frankly especially in canada and especially in the part of the world
00:10:00.780 we're in and then always evolving rapidly cryptocurrencies as well as another method of
00:10:06.260 people uh transacting as well how do you ensure that your definitions are airtight enough to
00:10:14.920 prevent commercial banks or any other institutions from getting around that you know whether it's uh
00:10:20.620 you know a semi-physical method of of of currency be like a digital uh card with with some digital
00:10:28.060 bank notes or something along those lines i may not even know what that could be right so how
00:10:34.380 how exactly does your framework uh prevent uh any other alternatives to frame out cash well i don't
00:10:40.300 have a framework i i have a bill that's proposing a framework be established by the finance minister
00:10:46.060 so that framework would would have to ensure that some of those concerns are addressed
00:10:51.260 but your bill has a certain language on what it defines as cash can you just reinstate in exactly
00:10:58.700 what what how would you define cash physical cash physical cash currency or coins okay so
00:11:06.460 uh and that's that that is what is considered legal tender in this country it's currency uh
00:11:12.620 produced by the royal canadian mint and coins minted by the royal came in but that is our
00:11:18.140 legal tender in this country? Prime Minister Mark Carney has actively
00:11:25.160 advocated for a central bank digital currency or short CBDC, explicitly
00:11:30.620 writing in his book Values that quote the most likely future money is a central
00:11:35.180 bank stablecoin. He presents digital loonie as a tool to modernize payments
00:11:40.100 and lower international fees. For viewers at home who might find Mark Carney's
00:11:45.020 vision future thinking modern intelligent fast how do you what do you
00:11:54.080 argue is the fundamental risk to personal financial freedom if Mark Carney's
00:11:58.040 vision is the one that gets implemented well I think the one country that that
00:12:02.780 has currently implemented a central bank digital currency is China and we know
00:12:08.400 that they've used their currency there to penalize individuals that they don't believe
00:12:15.680 have been following their particular ideology as a country and as a Marxist government.
00:12:26.720 And they've used it to restrict access to travel, to restrict access to funds,
00:12:32.260 to also restrict access to basic purchases of even necessities.
00:12:38.400 So we know that governments, when they have the ability to exercise complete control over an individual,
00:12:46.580 actually choose to exercise that ability.
00:12:48.140 And we saw it actually in Canada here during COVID-19,
00:12:51.440 where the Trudeau government decided to freeze Canadians' bank accounts.
00:12:57.700 And we know that that issue has been taken to the courts,
00:13:00.400 and the courts have overwhelmingly shown that that was a breach of our constitutional and charter rights here in Canada.
00:13:08.400 for the government to mandate that banks should freeze an individual or a business's account.
00:13:15.460 Do you think you're wreaking in support from the Freedom Convoy participants and sympathizers of that movement
00:13:21.940 based on the frustrations from the freezing of bank accounts back in 2022?
00:13:26.900 Well, I think they would be very supportive of this bill.
00:13:29.740 I haven't spoken to any of them about it, but I'm certain that they would be supportive of a bill like this.
00:13:35.440 but that support comes broadly from Canadians actually
00:13:40.920 because they're all aware of what the government did
00:13:43.940 in freezing individual bank accounts
00:13:45.920 and they all recognize that in our country
00:13:48.160 that's a breach of charter rights.
00:13:50.440 Can you just revisit back the section of vulnerable communities?
00:13:54.260 Again, I want to get to the constituency here
00:13:56.540 who are most affected or most interested in this kind of bill.
00:14:01.900 Why exactly do you believe,
00:14:03.120 Obviously, privacy is a major concern for many Canadians, but it seems to be a concern that can be sold off for a certain price of convenience, as we've agreed already.
00:14:11.700 What exactly is the some examples that you've heard or that you've thought of deeply about how important privacy is in the method of transaction?
00:14:19.740 You've talked about maybe domestic violence victims, seniors, people in remote communities.
00:14:25.280 Can you give me a few examples that you've heard or listened to in the recent past that have inspired you in approaching this bill?
00:14:31.420 Well, someone asked me just the other day, how would we ever, actually yesterday at one of the events here in Ottawa, somebody said, you know, I've often wondered if we do move in a digital direction more as a country, and this was actually at the Canadian Bankers Association reception that I attended, asked me, you know, I've often wondered how we would help homeless people.
00:14:57.700 you know like they don't typically have a bank account they don't typically have a debit card
00:15:04.500 or a credit card how would we be able to help them if we couldn't give them some cash just as
00:15:10.140 out of compassion you know and and that's just one example so the homeless population would be
00:15:17.600 very disadvantaged all of a sudden and and there's other people in remote communities that
00:15:23.300 And I know part of the government's plan is to provide everybody with broadband internet, no matter where you are in Canada.
00:15:31.040 But the reality is that we don't have that today.
00:15:33.940 And that in many remote communities, cash is the form of payment when you want to exchange goods or services among individuals.
00:15:43.680 So those are situations.
00:15:46.460 Many of the people that are elderly, some of the older people, have actually written me letters when they've realized I've reintroduced my bill, which I had in the previous parliament as well.
00:15:57.800 At that time, it was Bill C-400. Now it's coming back as Bill C-276.
00:16:02.640 and they've reached out, sent me an email just saying how much they support that
00:16:08.180 because as elderly people, they're not as comfortable dealing with strictly a digital form of payment services
00:16:17.000 through their bank or the use of credit cards.
00:16:20.580 And in fact, more and more of them are becoming concerned about the fraud and the scam
00:16:25.720 that's becoming too prevalent in our country.
00:16:29.380 And so people have been reaching out to me in that aspect
00:16:33.020 and saying that this is an important bill
00:16:34.920 because they do like to have cash on hand.
00:16:37.960 They know what they're exchanging for what.
00:16:41.640 Okay, so I want to revisit your bill.
00:16:44.580 And one thing that your bill is actually going to attempt to enact,
00:16:48.480 which is removing the cabinet,
00:16:51.420 or rather the Minister of Finance's unilateral ability
00:16:54.980 to melt currency and notes.
00:16:59.640 So why is it important for you to strip this executive power
00:17:02.080 away from the Prime Minister's Cabinet
00:17:04.260 and hand Vito back to the House of Commons?
00:17:07.260 Well, because Parliament as a whole
00:17:10.300 is the gatekeeper of our financial system.
00:17:14.440 Not the Minister of Finance, not Cabinet, but Parliament.
00:17:19.540 And so that control was shifted from Parliament to Cabinet
00:17:24.000 during Justin Trudeau's time here as Prime Minister.
00:17:27.260 And I think that's something that needs to be brought back to Parliament,
00:17:30.900 that if we're going to take physical currency out of circulation,
00:17:35.520 it should be a parliamentary decision,
00:17:38.080 and not a decision made by a few members that the Prime Minister has chosen
00:17:41.980 to sit around the Cabinet table.
00:17:44.180 And Laat, realistically, on, again, the parliamentary section of this,
00:17:49.300 How do you envision convincing Liberal Party members led by Prime Minister Mark Carney, who endorses this vision, or even members of the NDP and other opposition parties, to get to a point where this bill can move forward?
00:18:03.600 You know what, I think if these people canvass their constituents and have these discussions in their constituency with people that perhaps could be on the marginalized end of our society or even really common blue-collar workers, lots of them prefer cash as a method of payment.
00:18:26.060 but even executives understand the importance of having access to cash having having the access
00:18:33.720 to cash as a backstop but also as a form of making anonymous payments and you know protecting their
00:18:40.440 individual privacy making sure there's not a digital record kept somewhere about every single
00:18:46.680 financial transaction that they've decided to make i think i think that's important to just
00:18:52.000 about everybody and i think members whether that whatever party you're in i think if they're going
00:18:59.020 to actually ask their constituents how they think i think there'll be actually very broad-based
00:19:03.480 support for something like this and and you know it's this is something it's a private members
00:19:08.400 bill it could be adopted by parliament i fully understand that parliament has the ability to
00:19:13.860 actually revoke bills and to change legislation down the road going forward when governments
00:19:20.120 change and we can see it but i think for now if we can get this passed through all levels of
00:19:26.320 parliament through committee stage and then send over to the senate i think there's going to be
00:19:30.660 lots of good testimony but this is a good bill and that this is the direction canadians want to go
00:19:35.800 so have you heard from any members of the liberal caucus that they're supportive or that they'll be
00:19:42.280 willing to vote this at least into committee uh i haven't uh this time around i haven't spoken to
00:19:48.460 any Liberal members yet.
00:19:50.900 I did last time, and I believe I had some fairly strong support
00:19:54.300 in the Liberal Party.
00:19:55.460 Anything I will maintain?
00:19:56.860 I mean, the last time was a little bit of a different context, I would say.
00:20:00.020 So it may have been a little while,
00:20:01.860 and the dynamics have changed both in Cabinet
00:20:03.800 and in the Prime Minister's office as well.
00:20:06.920 And, of course, even in the seat count right now,
00:20:08.800 you're dealing with the majority government,
00:20:09.960 whereas before you didn't need a single Liberal vote before.
00:20:12.780 Maybe now you do.
00:20:14.340 Yeah.
00:20:14.840 It will absolutely require Liberal support.
00:20:17.880 if it's going to make it to the committee stage.
00:20:19.800 And my ask will be that liberals support it to get it into committee,
00:20:26.980 where committee can do a thorough study of why this is important.
00:20:32.060 They can bring in expert testimony.
00:20:34.560 They can bring in witnesses that will explain to committee
00:20:38.020 why they think that banning a central bank digital currency
00:20:41.880 is in the best interest of Canadians.
00:20:43.520 why also the access and use of cash is important
00:20:48.740 and why they think that Parliament should make decisions
00:20:51.660 when it comes to monetary issues and not just Cabinet.
00:20:54.480 So I'm looking forward to actually passing this through the House on second reading
00:20:59.200 getting it to committee and having a thorough study done.
00:21:02.740 Lastly, let's just exit off the bill and get to the central bank for a moment.
00:21:07.060 One of the things that they are working on is, I think it's the rail system
00:21:10.420 It's some sort of a national central bank run transaction system as opposed to maybe e-transfer or other private alternatives having a central system.
00:21:21.420 Countries in the world, multiple, have these systems like even Brazil where any regulated bank, any recognized bank can have an account holder that can use a system via contact information like an email or a phone number or a unique code and then send money at instant speeds.
00:21:40.420 You know without you know without any delays or any any taxes or fees whatsoever
00:21:45.820 Are you in principle support of this of this kind of technology from a central bank?
00:21:50.360 Well, not from the central bank, but there's individuals that have stable coins
00:21:55.840 Stable coin platform which talk about that same same type of system where they have one single payment rail
00:22:01.600 Which would expedite the movement of money?
00:22:04.460 Not just domestically, but also internationally
00:22:07.180 Lastly, was Pierre Polyev, your current leader, mistaken
00:22:13.420 when he talked about firing the governor of the Bank of Canada?
00:22:22.400 I don't have an opinion on that.
00:22:27.720 Well, I don't believe Pierre Polyev is wrong on very many things.
00:22:33.260 I think he's very well researched and well thought through individual and if
00:22:38.600 he made that statement I'm I'm sure there was a good reason for it well
00:22:42.200 there you have it folks if you enjoyed the video please drop a like subscribe
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