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Three major interrelated global developments are having a profound impact on the Canadian economy and making the outlook more uncertain than it was at the time of the July Monetary Policy Report Update.

Over the last 30 years, the business mix of banks in Canada has changed significantly. Progress in information-processing technology, legislative changes, and market forces have combined to blur the traditional distinctions between banks and other financial institutions and have allowed banks to offer a much wider range of products and services. In this article, the author reviews the expansion of bank lending to households over this period and their recent movement into personal wealth management. While these trends were facilitated by revisions to legislation, they also reflected the changing needs of the "baby boom" generation, first as home-buyers and, more recently, as middle-aged investors. On the commercial and corporate side, banks reacted to the rapid expansion of securities markets (and to the reduced demand for intermediation by both lenders/depositors and borrowers) by moving into investment banking, after legislative changes opened this business to them in the late 1980s. They also used their expertise in credit assessment and risk management to provide credit guarantees and to act as counterparties and intermediaries in derivatives markets. Notable in this broadening of bank activities has been their more recent entry into the trust, mutual fund, and retail brokerage business. The banks have also made preliminary forays into insurance. The expansion of off-balance-sheet activities has made fee income an increasingly important part of bank earnings. The article also looks at the emerging tools and techniques that will most likely transform the structure of banking in the future.

We assess the impact of COVID-19 on consumption indicators by estimating the effects of government-mandated containment measures and of the willingness of individuals to voluntarily physically distance to prevent contagion.

In 2015, the Bank of Canada undertook the large-scale Retailer Survey on the Cost of Payment Methods.

Governor Mark Carney announces the launch of the new $50 bank note.

We construct an alternative scenario in which trend labour input and business investment are stronger than that expected in the Bank of Canada’s base-case projection in the October 2017 Monetary Policy Report.

This analytical note assesses the prevalence of liquidity provision by institutional investors in Canadian bonds. We find that the practice is not prevalent in Canada. Customer liquidity provision is more prevalent for less liquid bonds, on days when liquidity is already expensive or when there are larger trading volumes. In our interpretation, Canadian dealers draw on customer liquidity as a supplementary source of liquidity and only when necessary, given its cost.

Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn A. Wilkins discusses the challenges the Bank of Canada is facing as it seeks to renew its inflation-control target in 2021. Kicking off a day-long workshop on the renewal of the monetary policy framework, she explains how the Bank’s research on alternative frameworks is shaping up and invites discussion of how the COVID-19 crisis has changed what is known about alternative policy tools in action.

This is the first of the Financial Markets Department’s descriptions of Canadian financial industrial organization. The document discusses the organization of the repurchase-agreement (repo) market in Canada.

The financial turbulence over the past year has been costly and difficult for many individuals and financial institutions; it's been challenging for policy-makers; and it's had implications for the overall economy.