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Gordon Thiessen, Governor of the Bank of Canada, delivered the HERMES-Glendon Lecture at York University, Toronto, in March 1995. The speech focussed on the interrelationships of uncertainty and the transmission of monetary policy to the economy. It looked at how the various types of uncertainty influence the behaviour of economic actors, and at how uncertainty affects the transmission of monetary policy through the economy. The first part of the lecture outlines the Bank of Canada's view of the transmission mechanism, with considerable attention paid to the role of uncertainty. In the second part, the various ways in which the Bank has tried to reduce uncertainty are discussed. The various kinds of uncertainty that impinge on the economy and on the policy process are addressed.

The neutral rate of interest is important for central banks because it helps measure the stance of monetary policy. We present updated estimates of the neutral rate in Canada using the most recent data. We expect the COVID-19 pandemic to significantly affect the fundamental drivers of the Canadian neutral rate.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Bank of Canada Governor Stephen S. Poloz today unveiled the new $10 bank note featuring Viola Desmond during a ceremony at the Halifax Central Library.

This report lays out elements of the Bank’s strategy related to climate change and details how the issue will be managed holistically across the organization, following the recommendations of the Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures.

Canada’s new and more secure $5 and $10 polymer bank notes were unveiled today at the Bank of Canada’s Ottawa head office, and from aboard the International Space Station.

This section includes information and products that explain how blind and partially-sighted Canadians can determine the denominations of bank notes.

The Bank of Canada has announced the entry into circulation of the new $5 and $10 polymer bank notes. Starting today, these final two notes in the new polymer Frontiers series will be available at financial institutions across Canada.

Overall, results of the second-quarter 2025 survey show that the CSCE indicator—a measure developed to summarize the opinions of Canadian consumers—declined again this quarter as spending intentions continued to weaken due to the persistent threats of tariffs and related uncertainty. Consumers still see the labour market as soft, and their fear of job loss is elevated. The trade conflict is leading consumers to become increasingly cautious about their spending plans and to change their spending behaviour. Consumers’ short-term inflation expectations have changed little since increasing markedly in the first quarter of 2025. This quarter, more consumers cited tariffs as the most important factor affecting the Bank of Canada’s ability to control inflation.

The authors examine the recent evolution of commodity prices. They discuss the factors behind the price declines that occurred between the summer of 1997 and the end of 1998, including the key supply factors and the drop in Asian demand caused by that region's concurrent financial and economic crisis. They then review the effects of the reduction in world commodity prices on economic activity in Canada. They point out that the depreciation of the Canadian dollar against the U.S. dollar, together with the continued strength of the U.S. economy, has partly offset the negative effects on Canadian aggregate demand.

We develop an algorithm that extracts information about sale and repurchase agreements (repos) from disaggregated settlement data in order to generate a new historical dataset for research.