Good afternoon and thank you very much for the kind introduction, John. I’m really pleased to have the opportunity to talk with all of you today—even if we are doing so virtually and from opposite coasts. I’m now a resident of Canada’s west coast, but I hold fond memories of time spent vacationing in the Maritimes from my home town of Québec. As you know, the Bank made the decision yesterday to maintain our target for the overnight rate at 0.25 percent, and we’ll spend some time discussing that later. But first, I want to talk about some of our actions to address COVID-19 and the immense challenges this pandemic p ... (full story)

Since the COVID‑19 pandemic hit Canada in March, the Bank of Canada has taken several steps to help households and businesses get through the crisis and to support a solid economic recovery. Cutting our policy interest rate to a low of 0.25 percent and holding it there has reduced short-term borrowing costs for households and businesses. But when the policy rate is this low, we need to dig deeper into our tool kit to also influence the longer-term interest rates that matter to Canadians. One tool for this is quantitative easing—QE for short. In a nutshell, our QE program involves buying large amounts of bonds that ... (full story)