UBC students approve of Poilievre's blockchain vision, but what about fedcoins and social credit?

This past Thursday, more than 150 university students gathered at the University of British Columbia (UBC) to meet and greet Canadian Conservative Party leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre.

“This is the biggest event of any club, politically, on campus in the last five years,” said president of the UBC conservatives, Sally Zhou. I asked Zhou and other students about what life is like being a young conservative in Canada, as well as what promise they would like to see fulfilled most by MP Poilievre if he were to become prime minister. 

Among common answers such as freedom of choice and expression, some students shared their excitement about Poilievre’s recent promise to make Canada the “blockchain capital of the world.”  

But what exactly does that mean? Does Poilievre's plan to partner with provinces “to align rules and definitions across jurisdictions to make it easy for blockchain companies to operate across Canadian jurisdictions at the same time without a cobweb of contradictory rules,” as reported by the National Post, mean a blockchain-based corporate social credit system like China’s for Canadians? 

Does Poilievre support Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC’s) in Canada, as the Bank of Canada’s recent research collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) suggests could be in Canada’s future?

UBC was one of at least five campaign stops scheduled for the MP in British Columbia this month, and took place the same day around 1,000 people packed the Vancouver Croatian Centre for Poilievre. 

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