Search

We are pleased to appear before this committee today to discuss the Bank of Canada’s views on the economy and our monetary policy stance. Before I take your questions, I would like to give you some of the highlights from our latest Monetary Policy Report, which was released last week.

The Bank's mandate is to promote Canada's economic and financial well-being. Clearly, this is an important mandate, and we are determined to demonstrate excellence as we work to fulfill it.

The Bank’s outlook for inflation and overall economic activity in Canada to the end of 2002 has not changed fundamentally from that presented in the May Monetary Policy Report.

In the year just ended, the global economy faced a number of exceptional challenges, reflecting a wide range of economic, financial, and geopolitical risks and uncertainties. These included the fallout from the September 2001 terrorist attacks, corporate accounting scandals, stock market volatility, and developments in the Middle East. Despite this global backdrop, the Canadian economy outperformed virtually all other industrial economies, growing by about 3 1/4 per cent and creating 560,000 jobs, while inflation expectations remained well anchored to the Bank of Canada’s 2 per cent inflation-control target.

This article provides an analysis of some recent banking regulatory initiatives that are likely to influence the activities of financial intermediaries and the effectiveness of central bank monetary policy implementation frameworks. Although the effects of individual regulations can be anticipated in most cases, the combined regulatory impact is not yet clear. Central banks should, however, be able to accommodate the effects of the emerging regulatory environment within their existing policy implementation frameworks.

It's great to be back in Vancouver and to renew acquaintances at the Board of Trade. I'm going to spend some time today discussing the Bank of Canada's outlook for the Canadian economy and inflation, and how we are responding. But in order to understand the current economic situation, we need to look at some of the extraordinary events of the past year or so and how those events have affected the economy.

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.

Consult our "blackout" guidelines for communications around fixed announcement dates.

Press conference following the release of the Monetary Policy Report.

The main economic concern of the past year was the slowdown that occurred not just here in Canada, but in most major economies. Compounding the economic concerns were the 11 September terrorist attacks in the United States.