Search

The authors describe a special survey of the payment and financial-reporting practices of Canadian firms conducted by the Bank of Canada's regional offices to determine if the U.S. dollar has started to displace the Canadian dollar as a preferred unit of account. A cross-section of firms was asked what currency (or currencies) they used: (i) for quoting sales to Canadian customers, (ii) for quoting prices to foreigners, (iii) for reporting their financial results, and (iv) for quoting salaries and wages. The survey results reported here extend some earlier results reported in a previous Review article by Murray and Powell. The data indicate that, despite the dominance of the U.S. dollar in world trade and as an international standard of value, use of the U.S. dollar in Canada is very limited. The vast majority of Canadian firms price their products and keep their financial statements in Canadian dollars, and very few workers in Canada have their salaries paid in a foreign currency. The Canadian dollar is still strongly preferred for most pricing and financial-reporting activities in Canada, and there is very little evidence of "dollarization."

Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem discuss shifts in the global trade environment and outlines the challenges and opportunities for Canada.

The Bank projects that growth in the Canadian economy will accelerate from 1.6 percent this year to 2 percent in 2021.

This article presents the key results from the 2023 Bank of Canada Financial System Survey, conducted between February 21 and March 10. The survey included a special section on margining practices for non-centrally cleared derivatives.

This supervisory guideline explains the incident reporting requirements applicable to payment service providers subject to the Retail Payment Activities Act and provides clarity on how the Bank expects payment service providers to comply with them.

The global economy has suffered an intense, synchronous recession and considerable excess supply has opened up.

The Bank’s new forecast calls for economic growth of 2.0 percent this year, 2.1 per cent in 2019 and 1.8 per cent in 2020.

Canada’s inflation-control targets establish a specific medium-term objective for monetary policy.

The spread between the yield of a corporate bond and the yield of a similar Government of Canada bond reflects compensation for possible default by the issuing firm and compensation for additional risks beyond default.

The underground economy in Canada has attracted increased attention over the past few years, yet there is no precise way to measure its size. Recent estimates vary between 4 per cent and 15 per cent of gross domestic product. This article provides an overview of measurement issues and recent estimates. It then focusses on the "monetary" approach to estimating the size of the underground economy. This approach is based on the assumption that the demand for bank notes provides a clue as to the size of the underground economy. The article concludes that estimates that use this approach must be viewed with considerable caution. They are based on a number of assumptions that are difficult to verify and that significantly affect the results.