Conservative leadership candidate Maxime Bernier attacked Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz Tuesday for championing the Liberals’ deficit spending.

“The Governor of the Bank of Canada, Stephen Poloz, agrees that there is little more he can do to stimulate the economy and that we should use other means than monetary policy. He is right in saying this. However, he should have stopped there,” Bernier said at a press conference on Parliament Hill.

“Instead, he has spent the past year using every occasion to champion the Liberal government’s misguided plan to go into deficit and spend more taxpayers’ money. Mr. Poloz is not only wrong about the effectiveness of this Keynesian solution. He is wrong in actively promoting it and encouraging the government fiscal policy. The Governor of the Central Bank is a civil servant, not a politician”.

Bernier noted that when his leadership rival, Andrew Saxton, asked Poloz in committee in April 2015 to comment on the benefits of a balanced budget, Poloz refused to comment on fiscal policy.

“He was right. He has a duty to remain impartial when it comes to the different types of fiscal policies that should be implemented. He has no business cheerleading one type of solution over another to stimulate the economy,” Bernier said.

“His business is to manage the Central Bank. He has crossed a line, and I strongly suggest that he refrain in the future from such involvement into partisan politics.”

On monetary policy itself, Bernier said too few noticed the October decision of the Government of Canada and the Bank of Canada to renew the Bank’s mandate of a 2 per cent inflation target, the mid-point of the 1 to 3 per cent inflation-control range, for another five years.

That’s been the target since 1991, and in the lead-up to the decision there was speculation it might be raised to head off any risk of deflation.

Bernier acknowledged Tuesday that the Bank decided to stick to its two per cent inflation target, forcing it to keep interest rates low, to preserve its ability to intervene more forcefully in a period of crisis. But he argued that policy has failed to produce the intended results.

“We have had interest rates close to zero per cent for eight years but this had no effect on growth. It did not work in Japan, which has been doing this for 25 years. It is not working in Europe either,” he said.

“However, it is creating more and more distortions in the economy. Artificially low interest rates are encouraging people to borrow. The debt carried by Canadian households has reached record levels. If interest rates increased now, hundreds of thousands of Canadians would suddenly have trouble paying their mortgage.”

It’s also causing trouble for banks and insurance companies, which are forced to invest in riskier assets, Bernier added.

“They are creating bubbles in various sectors, which is exactly the reason why there was a crash in 2007,” he said. “Everybody is now aware that it’s not working and that the situation has become untenable.”

Bernier said that if he were prime minister, he would explore the possibility of lowering Canada’s inflation target to zero.

One of the most active Conservative leadership candidates in the race, Bernier has made a number of policy announcements since announcing his leadership bid last spring — proposing, among many other things, to end the capital gains tax, privatize Canada’s airports, dismantle supply management and reduce the number of income tax brackets.