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The Canadian economy has come through the financial volatility and global economic slowdown of the past few years quite well and has started 1999 on a strong note, Bank of Canada Governor Gordon Thiessen told members of La Chambre de Commerce de la région sherbrookoise today.

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.

Businesses remain positive about the outlook for the next 12 months, despite more modest expectations for U.S. economic growth. Indicators of future sales and investment are moderately higher, and intentions to hire have become more widespread.

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

Results from the spring Business Outlook Survey point to a moderation from previously high levels of domestic and foreign demand for firms in most regions. Investment and employment intentions remain positive.

Things have changed somewhat since then. While global economic growth is expected to be a little higher than anticipated last spring, a weaker near-term outlook for the U.S. economy has curbed the near-term prospects for Canadian exports and growth.

Over the past year, both private sector financial market participants and public sector authorities have been preoccupied with the topic of liquidity as never before. Throughout the financial market turbulence, private liquidity management has become tremendously important.

Global and Canadian economic developments have been unfolding broadly as expected, and the Bank's outlook for output and inflation in Canada through to the end of 2006 is little changed from the scenario outlined in the April Report. Strong growth in final domestic demand in Canada continues to offset the drag from net exports.

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of macroprudential policies when regulations are uneven across mortgage lender types. We look at credit tightening that results from macroprudential regulations and examine how much of it is counteracted by credit shifting to unregulated lenders. We also study the impact of monetary policy tightening when some lenders are unregulated.