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When I talk about the "financial system," I am referring to financial institutions and markets, the infrastructure, laws, and regulations that govern and support their operations, and the macroeconomic framework within which they operate. My message for you is that improving the efficiency of Canada's financial system is imperative.

It is always a pleasure to return and speak to people in my home province. This time, we are here for a meeting of the Bank of Canada's Board of Directors. Once a year, our Board meets outside Ottawa, in a different part of the country. This year, we are delighted to be in Regina.

Between 2002 and 2008, global commodity prices rose to unprecedented levels. This article examines the process of adjustment to the commodity boom in four industrialized, commodity-exporting countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Norway). The article focuses on both the direct adjustment within the commodity-producing sectors (via increased employment and capital spending) and the indirect adjustment in the macro economy. The analysis finds that the indirect adjustment process, which was triggered by the increase in incomes that the commodity-price boom generated, has been the most important part of the adjustment in all four economies. Through this channel, aggregate demand rose, exchange rates appreciated, and adjustment was facilitated in other sectors, such as manufacturing and construction.

Proceedings of a conference held by the Bank of Canada, May 1998 (proceedings volume, available in electronic format only)

We develop a dynamic model to capture key features of decentralized finance lending. We identify a price-liquidity feedback: the market outcome in any given period depends on agents' expectations about lending activities in future periods, with higher future price expectations leading to more lending and higher prices in that period.

Deposit insurance protects depositors from failing banks, thus making insured deposits risk-free. When a deposit insurance limit is increased, some deposits that previously were uninsured become insured, thereby increasing the share of risk-free assets in households’ portfolios. This increase cannot simply be undone by households, because to invest in uninsured deposits, a household must first invest in insured deposits up to the limit. This basic insight is the starting point of the analysis in this paper.

Available sources of hourly wage data in Canada sometimes send conflicting signals about wage growth. This note thus has two objectives: first, we develop a wage measure—the wage-common—to better capture the (underlying) wage pressures reflecting the common trend across the available data sources. Second, we re-examine the relationship between wage growth and macro drivers (labour market slack and labour productivity).

This paper examines the implications of positive news about future asset values that turn out to be incorrect at a later date in an open economy model with banking. The model captures the patterns of bank credit and current account dynamics in Spain between 2000 and 2010. The model finds that the use of unconventional policies leads to a milder bust.

The COVID-19 pandemic uncovered policy challenges related to the economic measures that were taken to support the economy. Two years later, we attempt to identify the broader impact of these measures and research that needs to follow.

When Paul and I appeared before this Committee last April, we said that the economy appeared to be operating slightly below its production capacity, and that we expected it to move back to full capacity in the second half of 2006. In our October Monetary Policy Report, which we published last Thursday, we said that economic growth in the first half of the year was somewhat stronger than we had previously expected. Indeed, the global and Canadian economies have continued to grow at a solid pace, and our economy now appears to be operating at full production capacity.