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This survey took place during the third wave of the COVID‑19 pandemic and coincided with the acceleration of vaccination efforts. Like the previous four surveys, this survey included questions on the impact of COVID‑19 and the measures to contain its spread. This survey also asked respondents how they are planning to use the extra savings they may have accumulated during the pandemic.

During and after the Great Recession of 2008–09, conventional monetary policy in the United States and many other advanced economies was constrained by the effective lower bound (ELB) on nominal interest rates. Several central banks implemented large-scale asset purchase (LSAP) programs, more commonly known as quantitative easing or QE, to provide additional monetary stimulus.

This note analyzes the evolution of the narrative in the Bank of Canada’s Monetary Policy Report (MPR). It presents descriptive statistics on the core text, including length, most frequently used words and readability level—the three Ls. Although each Governor of the Bank of Canada focuses on the macroeconomic events of the day and the mandate of inflation targeting, we observe that the language used in the MPR varies somewhat from one Governor’s tenure to the next.

Deputy Governor Lynn Patterson discusses how the Bank gathers financial market intelligence and what it is learning.

Average hourly real wage series from the Labor Productivity and Costs (LPC) program and the Current Employment Statistics (CES) program have evolved very differently over the past decades.

Since 1995, acquisitions of foreign firms by Canadian residents and acquisitions of Canadian firms by foreign residents have increased. Through most of this period, the dollar has depreciated, but the cumulative net balance of foreign direct investment acquisition flows has remained close to zero. The recent upward trend in bilateral acquisition flows is part of the globalization process as firms consolidate and rationalize their operations, and is not related to the value of the Canadian dollar. Standard models of international asset pricing imply that there should not be a relationship between the Canadian exchange rate and foreign takeovers of Canadian firms because an exchange rate movement does not give foreign buyers a systematic advantage over domestic buyers. Purchases of domestic firms by foreign residents are likely to be welfare-improving. Transactions between foreign and domestic residents are voluntary, and they imply that the foreign buyers expect to obtain higher profits from the firms' assets.

The financial system makes an important contribution to the welfare of all Canadians. The ability of households and firms to confidently hold and transfer financial assets is one of the fundamental building blocks of the Canadian economy.

Should a central bank take over the provision of e-money, a circulable electronic liability? We discuss how e-money technology changes the tradeoff between public and private provision, and the tradeoff between e-money and a central bank's existing liabilities like bank notes and reserves.

Cover page

French Provincial Issues in Canada

The coins pictured on the cover are part of the National Currency Collection, Bank of Canada.
Photography by Gord Carter, Ottawa.

Can regulators keep pace with banks’ creative regulatory workarounds? Our analysis unpacks the trade-offs between fixed regulations and crisis-triggered rules, showing that the latter are especially prone to circumvention—and can trigger larger, costlier bailouts.