I think the Bank of Canada has managed monetary policy remarkably well through the financial crisis of 2008 and the economic recovery. They aggressively eased monetary policy as the financial shock hit. They took interest rates down to unheard-of levels that no economist five years in advance would ever had anticipated you would have rates decline to. It did some very out-of-the-box thinking about how to respond to the environment.
The introduction of the conditional commitment was a good example of something that hadn't been tried before and that actually, I think, showed its benefits. I think it's one of the reasons why the federal reserve has chosen to follow the same path in terms of trying to anchor interest rate expectations, at a level even lower than they otherwise would have, to provide support to the economy.
I think the decision to take interest rates off the zero per cent floor was sound. I'll be honest; I actually think zero per cent interest rates might even be creating some of the problems in the United States, because your financial system doesn't actually operate properly when there is zero per cent interest. When you have an interest-bearing chequing account, you actually have to have some interest on it or else it stops being an interest-bearing account. It's probably contributing to the problem with the circulation of money.
You know, you can always look with perfect hindsight and raise questions, but with the information they had at the time, I think they've done a remarkably good job.