No Surprises Here: The Bank of Canada Hiked Rates By Only 25 bps, Signaling a Pause As expected, the Bank of Canada–satisfied with the sharp decline in recent inflation pressure–raised the policy rate by only 25 bps to 4.5%. Forecasting that inflation will return to roughly 3.0% later this year and to the target of […]

Employment Report Ended 2022 With A Boom Today’s Labour Force Survey for December was much stronger than expected, raising the odds of a 25 bps increase in the policy rate by the Bank of Canada on January 25th. While the Bank has hiked rates by 400 bps to 4.25%, core inflation remains sticky, wages have […]

The Bank of Canada Won’t Like This Inflation Report November’s CPI inflation rate fell only one tick to 6.8%, despite gasoline prices falling. This follows a two-month reading of 6.9%. Excluding food and energy, prices rose 5.4% yearly last month, up from 5.3% in October. Critical gauges of underlying price pressure were mixed but continued […]

Another Month, Another Dip in Housing Statistics released today by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) show home sales edged down in November. National home sales fell 3.3% between October and November, continuing the moderating sales trend that began last February on the precipice of unprecedented monetary policy tightening. Sales are down a whopping 39% […]

The Bank of Canada Hiked Rates The Full 50 bps The Governing Council of the Bank of Canada raised its target for the overnight policy rate by 50 basis points today to 4.25% and signalled that the Council would “consider whether the policy interest rate needs to rise further to bring supply and demand back into […]

Little Comfort for the Bank of Canada in Today’s Jobs Report Today’s Labour Force Survey for November will do little to assuage the Bank of Canada’s concern about inflation. While employment growth slowed to 10,100 net new jobs–down sharply from October’s reading–the report’s underlying details point to excess labour demand and rising wages. This is […]

Bank of Canada Will Not Be Happy With This Inflation Report Not only did the headline CPI inflation rate stall at 6.9% last month, but the core CPI numbers remain stubbornly high. Food inflation–a highly visible component–edged down slightly. Still, prices for food purchased from stores (+11.0%) continued to increase faster year over year than the […]

Very Strong Employment Report For October Today’s Labour Force Survey for October was surprisingly strong, boosting wage inflation to an eye-popping 5.6% year-over-year pace. While good news for the economy, this is terrible news for the inflation fight–just when the Bank of Canada eased its foot on the brakes. The two-year and five-year Government of […]

The Bank of Canada Slowed the Pace of Monetary Tightening The Governing Council of the Bank of Canada raised its target for the overnight policy rate by 50 basis points today to 3.75% and signalled that the policy rate would rise further. The Bank is also continuing its policy of quantitative tightening (QT), reducing its holdings […]

Bank of Canada Will Not Be Happy With This Inflation Report Canada’s headline inflation rate ticked down slightly last month to 6.9%, but measures of core inflation remain stubbornly high, and food prices hit a 41-year high. Lower gasoline prices were primarily responsible for the decline in inflation in the past three months. Bond markets […]