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The Bank of Canada today held its target for the overnight rate at 4½%, with the Bank Rate at 4¾% and the deposit rate at 4½%. The Bank is also continuing its policy of quantitative tightening.

Board of Directors of the Bank of Canada today announced the appointment of Jean Boivin as Deputy Governor and member of the Governing Council of the Bank effective 1 April.

There has been a dramatic move among major central banks over the past decade towards greater transparency in monetary policy, Bank of Canada Governor Gordon Thiessen told the Metropolitan Halifax Chamber of Commerce in a speech today. This process has been driven not only by the general trend to greater accountability on the part of […]

The preamble of this bill addresses some very important issues: the need for Canadians to trust in the management of the public purse, and the importance of openness and accountability. I can assure you that the Bank of Canada takes these issues very seriously.

We quantify the effects of large-scale stock purchases by a central bank and compare these to bond purchases. We find that the central bank’s equity purchases would lower the risk and term premiums on stocks and long-term bonds, respectively, and thereby stimulate economic activity.

In 1996 inflation remained within the Bank’s target range but was subject to downward pressure. The low rate of inflation contributed to a major easing in monetary conditions, and interest rates reached their lowest level in 30 years.

This article first outlines the activities of the Bank's regional offices and looks at how regional economic analysis fits into the Bank's decision-making process. The changing role of the regional offices in communications and in information gathering is examined, focusing on the quarterly surveys of industries and associations. The second section reviews, from a regional perspective, economic developments since the Asian crisis and future prospects.

When constrained by the zero lower bound, some central banks have communicated a threshold that must be met before short-term interest rates would be permitted to rise. Simulation results for Canada show that forward guidance that is conditional on achieving a price-level threshold can theoretically raise demand and inflation expectations by significantly more than unemployment thresholds. This superior performance is attributable to the fact that the price-level threshold depends on past inflation outcomes. In practice, however, history-dependent thresholds such as this might be more challenging for central banks to communicate.