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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 January 24, 2024.

Real GDP in Canada is expected to grow by 2.0 per cent in 2018, 2.2 per cent in 2019 and 1.9 per cent in 2020.

Monetary policy actions take a relatively long time to affect the economy and inflation—anywhere between 12 to 24 months. Because of this, central banks must always look ahead and must put in place today the monetary conditions that are needed to help keep the economy on a sustainable path down the road. By 'sustainable' I mean a situation where economic growth and job creation are not at risk from rising inflation.

Results from the spring Business Outlook Survey point to a moderation from previously high levels of domestic and foreign demand for firms in most regions. Investment and employment intentions remain positive.

As the title of the conference suggests, we have seen many boom-and-bust cycles in the commodity sector. This raises one obvious and central question: How can we avoid them in the future?

These are challenging times, indeed. We are facing a financial crisis without comparison for generations. Most financial markets have experienced historic declines in prices and unprecedented spikes in volatility.

This is an account of the deliberations of the Bank of Canada’s Governing Council leading to the monetary policy decision on June 4, 2025.

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

The federal government and the Bank of Canada have been committed for some time to achieving and maintaining price stability as a way to foster a rising standard of living for all Canadians. To support this objective, the inflation-control target range of 1 to 3 per cent was recently extended through to the end of 2001. By then, the government and the Bank plan to announce a long-run target for monetary policy. In this article, the authors provide an overview of the most recent empirical evidence on the benefits of lower inflation. They draw on an extensive earlier survey and on work presented at two recent conferences on price stability hosted by the Bank of Canada. They find that, when inflation and tax interactions are taken into account, there are large benefits to lowering inflation. When these benefits are compared with the transitional costs associated with lowering inflation, significant positive benefits remain. However, the authors note that the extension of the inflation-control targets to the end of 2001 allows further research to ensure an operational definition of price stability that will help Canadians achieve a high standard of living.

This is an account of the deliberations of the Bank of Canada’s Governing Council leading to the monetary policy decision on January 29, 2025.