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Lectures delivered by Gordon G. Thiessen, Governor of the Bank of Canada 1994 to 2001

Text of major 1995 lecture by Bank Governor Gordon Thiessen, plus articles from Bank of Canada Review and other sources

The Canadian economy continued to expand robustly in 2000 while inflation remained low.

This special issue of the Review, “Lessons from the Financial Crisis,” examines the recent research on the role of liquidity in the financial system and on the public policy responses that aimed to restore stability to the financial system during the crisis and to foster economic recovery.

We examine different monetary policy governance structures and discuss the important roles of non-legislated processes and practices. We also provide an update on monetary policy governance at the Bank of Canada and how it has evolved over time.

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.

Cover page

Silver Presentation Salver

The salver, which was bequeathed to the Bank of Canada by Lady Macmillan in 1967, is part of the artifact collection of the Bank of Canada Archives.
Photography by Mone Cheng, Innovacom, Ottawa.

The Canadian financial system comprises financial markets, financial institutions, and the clearing and settlement systems.

This volume features interesting images and anecdotes about Canada's central bank and its place in Canadian society from 1935 until the present.

When it launched a new system for regularly announcing its decisions regarding the overnight rate of interest in December 2000, the Bank of Canada had a number of key objectives in mind. These included reduced uncertainty in financial markets, greater focus on the Canadian rather than the U.S. economic environment, more emphasis on the medium-term perspective of monetary policy, and increased transparency regarding the Bank's interest rate decisions. Evidence to date suggests that all four objectives have been met to a substantial degree. Fixed announcement dates have provided regular opportunities for the Bank to communicate its views on the state of the Canadian economy to the public. This has helped to improve understanding of the broad direction of monetary policy and of the rationale behind the Bank's policy decisions although the decisions themselves are not always fully anticipated.