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This is an account of the deliberations of the Bank of Canada’s Governing Council leading to the monetary policy decision on December 6, 2023.

Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem talks about the Bank’s latest interest rate announcement and what’s driving inflation in Canada. He also discusses how the Bank will manage the next step in the Bank’s balance sheet operations – quantitative tightening.

Projections for Canadian economic growth have been increased to 3.1 per cent this year and 2.1 per cent in 2018, with growth of 1.5 per cent forecast for 2019.

Uncertainty about the level of future inflation adversely affects the economy because it distorts the savings and investment decisions of households and businesses. Since these decisions typically involve planning horizons of many years, the adverse effects from inflation uncertainty can be reduced by adopting a policy framework that makes future inflation more predictable over long time horizons. When the inflation-control target was renewed in May 2001, the agreement affirmed that monetary policy will be directed at moving inflation to the 2 per cent midpoint of the target range over a six-to-eight-quarter horizon. The author describes how this policy commitment increases the predictability of average inflation over periods longer than one year. This relationship is illustrated using the Canadian experience from the inflation-targeting period.

Global growth has slowed since the start of 2025 amid the ongoing shifts in US trade policy and the resulting uncertainty. Still, the global economy has remained resilient so far, even though US tariffs are at their highest levels in decades.

Valuation ratios in the Canadian stock market can help reveal investors’ expectations about future economic growth because the impact of economic growth on valuation ratios can vary across industries. We find that this variation helps produce accurate forecasts of future growth of real gross domestic product in Canada. The forecasts from our model declined by just over 3 percentage points between January 2022 and February 2023—a period when the Bank of Canada rapidly increased the overnight rate. As well, we find that interest-rate-sensitive industries had an outsized contribution to this expected slowdown in growth. 

Governor Tiff Macklem discusses key issues involved in the Governing Council’s deliberations about the policy rate decision and the MPR.

Our primary objective at the Bank is to promote the economic and financial welfare of Canadians. Over the years, we have learned that the best contribution that monetary policy can make in this regard is to give Canadians confidence in the future value of their money. We do this by keeping inflation low, stable, and predictable.

At the end of 2024, global economic growth was solid, and inflation had eased further toward central banks’ targets. Since then, the United States has imposed large and broad-based tariffs on most of its trading partners.