Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem takes part in a news conference after announcing an interest rate decision in Ottawa, Ont. on March 6.Blair Gable/Reuters
Jeremy Kronick is associate vice-president and director of the Centre on Financial and Monetary Policy at the C.D. Howe Institute, where Steve Ambler, a professor of economics at Université du Québec à Montréal, is the David Dodge Chair in Monetary Policy.
The inflation beast is looking considerably weaker. Between the Bank of Canada’s rate announcement on Sept. 4 and its announcement on Wednesday, Statistics Canada released two of its monthly reports on the consumer price index. They showed that headline inflation fell by almost a full percentage point and is now well below target.
For this reason, markets were not surprised by the 50-basis point cut in the Bank of Canada’s overnight rate target. The cut was fully baked into market expectations, and there was even speculation about a supersized cut of 75 basis points.
As it is, the bank has more work to do with its overnight rate. With inflation falling faster than the policy rate, monetary policy in real terms has become more restrictive since the........