Jobs: That's "What Matters"

David Robinson is an economics professor and dean of the Faculty of
Social Sciences at Laurentian University.

John Brook was a senior economist at the Toronto Dominion Bank who left
his job to run for the Liberals. It is startling to hear this ex-banker
criticizing the tight money policies of the Bank of Canada and blasting
the investment policies of the chartered banks. Another surprise is his
advocacy of private-sector accounting practices for the public sector;
as Brook points out, when we take capital assets and investment into
account, the public sector has a much better assets-to-debt ratio than
the private sector. The centrepiece in the Brook plan is a return to the
traditional Canadian high-wage productivity strategy.

Brook is not the man this reviewer thought he was. He is an ex-engineer
with his own business, and a left-wing nationalist to boot. His views on
populist monetary theory and “co-active capitalism” are reminiscent
of Trudeau’s tripartitism and the Cooperative Commonwealth. Might
Brook not be a future candidate for finance minister?