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Today, we released our Update to the April Monetary Policy Report. The Update reviews economic and financial trends in the context of Canada's inflation-control strategy.

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.

The last time I testified before this committee was in the spring of 2002, because we were unable to arrange our regular meeting last fall. You will recall that following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, we quickly and aggressively cut our policy interest rate to shore up confidence and support domestic demand. By last spring, evidence had already started to build that demand was growing faster than the economy's production capacity.

Just over seven years ago, my predecessor, John Crow, delivered the Hanson Memorial Lecture at the University of Alberta. In it, he discussed a number of issues relating to the conduct of Canadian monetary policy, including the goal of monetary policy, the transmission mechanism, the use of monetary aggregates as policy guides, financial market uncertainty, and the role of the exchange rate

As indicated in the 22 September announcement, the Bank of Canada today releases the new schedule for Bank of Canada Term PRA liquidity operations commencing the week of 26 October 2009 and running through to the January 2010 Fixed Announcement Date.

The financial turbulence that began in the U.S. subprime-mortgage market in August 2007 reached maximum intensity towards the end of 2008, and enveloped the entire global economy. Strains that had previously been concentrated in a few major financial centers turned into a full-blown crisis, affecting both industrial and emerging-market economies through trade, financial, and confidence channels.

The Bank of Canada is publishing today the schedule of its term Purchase and Resale Agreements (PRA) for private sector money market instruments to the end of January.

At the Bank of Canada, our balance sheet reflects the unique role we play as Canada’s central bank. Get an overview of how it’s used to acquire assets and support our core functions, and learn about the types of assets and liabilities we hold.

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.

At the time of the November 2000 Monetary Policy Report, although signs of the anticipated slowing of the U.S. economy were becoming apparent, the momentum of the global economy was considered strong.