Queen's motto is Sapientia et Doctrina Stabilitas, which we generally translate as "Wisdom and knowledge shall be the strength of thy times." This motto is especially pertinent to you as engineers graduating today.
The preamble to the Bank of Canada Act calls on us to promote the economic and financial welfare of Canada. In this context, we aim to foster good economic performance through monetary stability—that is to say, through low, stable, and predictable inflation. But no market economy can function properly unless it is also supported by an efficient and stable financial system.
In Canada, the economic weakness that we experienced was really concentrated in the third quarter of last year, particularly in September. The terrorist attacks in September created a great deal of uncertainty, and so the Bank of Canada, like the U.S. Federal Reserve, provided an extraordinary amount of stimulus by aggressively lowering interest rates.
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