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Governor Poloz explains that monetary policy is a powerful tool to promote economic welfare, but it also has some important limits.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and committee members. Senior Deputy Governor Wilkins and I are pleased to be back before you today to discuss the Bank’s Monetary Policy Report (MPR), which we published last week. When we were last here at the beginning of November, we saw signs that the Canadian economy was moderating after an […]

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

Results from the fourth-quarter 2022 Business Outlook Survey and the Business Leaders’ Pulse surveys from October 2022 through January 2023 show that business sentiment has continued to weaken. As a result of rising interest rates, firms’ sales expectations and investment plans are softening. Capacity pressures have moderated from elevated levels. In this context, firms expect a slower pace of price increases.

Governor Stephen S. Poloz discusses key issues involved in the Governing Council’s deliberations about the policy rate decision and the MPR.

Economists in the nineteenth century spent considerable time discussing the merits of a free-banking system, in which each commercial bank would be able to issue its own notes and deposits, subject to a convertibility requirement backed by its own gold reserves. Such a system, the proponents argued, would be able to deliver price-level stability yet be flexible enough to withstand the vicissitudes of the business cycle. Moreover, there would be no need for central banks. While this idea has received less attention in recent years, some economists still put it forward as a practical alternative to the current system. Laidler suggests that the centralizing tendencies in banking would inevitably undermine competition within a free-banking system, and lead to the natural emergence of one dominant bank. Other developments in the twentieth century, most notably the demise of the gold standard and widespread agreement that governments should play a determining role in setting monetary policy goals, have also limited the practicality of such a system. Laidler examines the Bank of Canada's history from the free-banking perspective and concludes that the current system of inflation targeting provides a much better anchor for orderly price-level behaviour than the free-banking system's convertibility could ever guarantee.

The Bank of Canada today announced that it is maintaining its target for the overnight rate at 3 per cent.

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

The Bank of Canada today announced that it is maintaining its target for the overnight rate at 1 per cent. The Bank Rate is correspondingly 1 1/4 per cent and the deposit rate is 3/4 per cent.

The Bank of Canada today reduced its target for the overnight rate by 25 basis points to 2.5%, with the Bank Rate at 2.75% and the deposit rate at 2.45%.