Ottawa

Jim Flaherty saves us from ourselves

The Finance Minister plays mortgage broker

In having his office intervene yesterday with Manulife’s mortgage rate, the Finance Minister managed the neat trick of earning the disagreement of all of Thomas Mulcair (“It’s Banana Republic behaviour”), Bob Rae (“That’s ridiculous”) and, now, Maxime Bernier.

“Me, personally, I would not dictate to businesses what prices to decide,” he says. “It’s the market. It’s supply and demand that decides the prices. It is the case for interest rates, it is the case for other products too.”

In Toronto to pick up some new shoes, the Finance Minister explains himself.

“Our concern, my concern, for a number of years with very low interest rates is to ensure that people can afford their mortgages when interest rates go up,” said Mr. Flaherty Wednesday in Toronto, where he toured a Roots factory and tried on a new pair of shoes as part of a long-standing pre-budget tradition.

“That’s the concern. It’s a concern for the Canadian people that they’re careful and that they don’t assume that very low interest rates like we have now will continue indefinitely, because they won’t. Inevitably, interest rates will go up, so that’s the concern,” he said.

It is probably good that this happened after the Manning conference.

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