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Canadian World War I War Bond

The $100 10-year bond of the FirstWar Loan is slightly larger than a sheet of legal-sized paper. It forms part of the National Currency Collection, Bank of Canada.

Photographed by Gord Carter, Ottawa.

Financial market expectations regarding future changes in the target for the overnight rate of interest are an important source of information for the Bank of Canada. Financial markets are the mechanism through which the policy rate affects other financial variables, such as longer-term interest rates, the exchange rate, and other asset prices. An accurate measure of their expectations can therefore help policy-makers assess the potential impact of contemplated changes. Johnson focuses on the expectations hypothesis, which measures expectations of future levels of the target overnight rate as implied by current money market yields. Although expectations can be derived from the current yield on any short-term fixed-income asset, some assets have proven to be more accurate predictors than others. The implementation of a policy of fixed-announcements dates has coincided with the increased predictive power of these short-term assets. As a result of this improvement, a relatively simple model of the yield curve can now provide an accurate measure of financial market expectations.

During the current power difficulties, the Bank of Canada in Ottawa has been operating from its back-up facility to provide essential services, such as monitoring financial markets and the critical clearing and settlement systems.

A consultation document on issues relating to the design and operation of the Real Return Bond program, prepared jointly by the Department of Finance and the Bank of Canada, is being published today.

The Real Return Bond (RRB) program was created in line with the Government's fundamental objective of raising stable, low-cost funding.

The purpose of these consultations is to obtain the views of market participants on issues relating to the design and operation of the government Real Return Bond (RRB) program.

The authors describe a special survey of the payment and financial-reporting practices of Canadian firms conducted by the Bank of Canada's regional offices to determine if the U.S. dollar has started to displace the Canadian dollar as a preferred unit of account. A cross-section of firms was asked what currency (or currencies) they used: (i) for quoting sales to Canadian customers, (ii) for quoting prices to foreigners, (iii) for reporting their financial results, and (iv) for quoting salaries and wages. The survey results reported here extend some earlier results reported in a previous Review article by Murray and Powell. The data indicate that, despite the dominance of the U.S. dollar in world trade and as an international standard of value, use of the U.S. dollar in Canada is very limited. The vast majority of Canadian firms price their products and keep their financial statements in Canadian dollars, and very few workers in Canada have their salaries paid in a foreign currency. The Canadian dollar is still strongly preferred for most pricing and financial-reporting activities in Canada, and there is very little evidence of "dollarization."

For more than 70 years now, the Couchiching Institute on Public Affairs has been bringing Canadians together with the purpose of asking some thought-provoking questions and encouraging lively, stimulating debates and action on a variety of key public policy issues.

The Bank of Canada today released its 2004 schedule of eight dates for announcing decisions on its key policy interest rate, and confirmed the announcement dates for the remainder of this year.

The Bank of Canada today released its Update to the April Monetary Policy Report.