Ms. Julie Dickson

Officer of the Order of Canada

I was waiting for a plumber to show up to fix a clothes washer problem and was idly watching CPAC when the Order of Canada awards ceremony was taking place.  This was the edition that was celebrating 50 years of these awards, and CPAC aired it on 14^th March. 2017. 

 Whenever I see these things I am fascinated by what people have done to receive such awards, from medicine to schools to athletics and even to politics and civil service, to drama, writing, artists and even sometimes humour.

 It was today that I learned that Ms. Julie Dickson was to be awarded with Officer of the Order of Canada, which it great for her and I am sure well earned.  However, when I heard what she had done I was somewhat puzzled, then annoyed.

 You see Ms. Dickson has been a proponent of banking instability since 1980 but really since 2002 at which time she was a member of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and remained so until 2006.

 By now I was a little more than interested, I was beginning to get intrigued and annoyed at the same time.

 For those who do not know the Basel 1, 11 & 111 agreements are simply banking agreements between privately owned central banks and have nothing to do directly with the various countries whose private central banks have signed these agreements. 

 So how does Canada fit with this group of private central banks, when our Bank of Canada is publicly owned?

 It fits because in 1974 when the Bank of International Settlements was started to protect the financial interests of the private central banks around the world, but principally in the US and Europe, from the publicly owned banks which were not gouging their governments with compounding interest rate credit loans.   Gerald Bouey who was the Governor of the Bank of Canada in 1974 when the BIS came calling, had the unmitigated gall to sign on a publicly owned central bank to a privately-owned banking agreement without the approval of either the owners of that bank or that of the parliament of Canada.  Some claim that it was all Pierre Trudeau’s fault, but according to Paul Hellyer, who was part of his cabinet, the government had no knowledge of the agreement being signed.   I imagine they found out when they saw the huge increase in interest rates, and should have immediately removed Bouey and cancelled the agreements, but they did not and thereby their complicity in the problem we have today.

 OK so what does this have to do with Ms. Dickson you may well ask?

 It would appear that in 1980 she won her MA in Economics from Queen’s University, and went directly to the Finance Department of Canada, working her way up till 2007 where she became Superintendent, Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), under the direction of the then Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty.

Clearly, they must have been a good fit because neither of them, both supposedly economists, could see that economically it made so much more sense to use the Bank of Canada rather than obtaining international credit at higher compounding interest rates to fund Canada’s needs.   Between them they sort of muddled through the 2008 international financial fiasco, and managed to assist Canada’s banks to survive with huge donations via the CHMA during the election of 2008  all the while claiming that there was not and would not be a banking problem in Canada….Remember that?

 From 2014 until now she is a member of the Supervisory board for the European Central Banks, and so you can be sure that any efforts to re employ the Bank of Canada for Canada’s use is definetly against her job.

 It is also ironic that the Bank of International Settlements which started the road to our high National debt by seducing Gerald Buoey in 1974 are now issuing a warning that our national debt is too high.  Maybe they fear we will renege on our debt and they will not get their unearned compounding interest …!

 I congratulate Ms. Dickson on a job very well done by her, even though it goes entirely against both my grain and the wellbeing of Canada, and I have trouble in understanding how someone can be awarded such an honour when she has spent her entire working life depriving Canadians of the use of their own bank, thereby increasing our national debt from $22 billion or so in `1974 to todayt over $1 trillion..

 Could it be that the owners of the Canadian National debt are now stepping in to  tell us how to reward their faithful servants with such awards as the Order of Canada? Is that possible? 

 Alice’s looking glass strikes again.

 Go figure.

Jeremy