Editor:
Thank you, Jim Pissot, for your eye-opening letter in the Feb. 1 edition of the Outlook after attending shock talker Tucker Carlson’s Calgary performance publicly supported by CEO Brett Oland of Bow Valley Credit Union.
Many questions after this arrogant elitist media shock talkers’ support for accused convoy criminals. First, it wasn’t clear, but should be made crystal clear that the opinions of Mr. Oland don’t necessarily represent other individuals who contribute to the community success of BVCU.
Second, Mr. Oland should heed his own opinion that “similar to the separation of church and state, there should be a separation of government from the commercial business sector” (Feb. 8, 2024, People’s World War) and not use his position as CEO of BVCU to promote the right wing anti-democratic conspiratorial political agenda imported from right-wing US hyper-individualism cranks. He should clearly separate his representative business position from his personal divisive segregationist politics to maintain investor trust.
Third, he should check his extremist rhetoric before making inflammatory, insufficiently supported hasty predictions of “a full out recession (best guess is that it begins 18 to 24 months from now) or in a worst-case scenario is a massive world war” (BVCU Strategy-White Paper Introduction to the Board Discussion, April 29, 2022), which – wait for it – should be here now, according to his predicted timetable.
Fourth, there’s the ridiculous idea that geopolitical economic investment risks are best managed by a small Alberta trust company stockpiling gold. Gold, the simple-minded hedge, claimed risky solution to US imported inflation is rejected by the Credit Union Deposit Corporation “some of the changes proposed by Bow Valley Credit Union, such as investing in precious metals, would increase risk and may impact the safety and soundness of financial institutions” (Globe and Mail, January 24, 2024).
I won’t be investing in an institution whose public representative CEOs best guesses experts call a “systematic risk to the Canadian banking system” (Ibid).
Jim Gough,
Canmore
