Bonuses are for people who excel at their job, not for people who fail at their job. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, who is ultimately the federal government’s paymaster, needs to be reminded of that.
The Bank of Canada handed out $20 million in bonuses in 2022 even as it hiked interest rates seven times and inflation reached a 40-year high. The central bank’s overarching objective is to keep inflation around “two per cent inside a control range of one to three per cent.” But though inflation climbed fully 4.8 percentage points above its target, the Bank of Canada gave 80 per cent of its workforce a bonus of $11,200 per person on average.
