Central banks never comment on one another's policies. It's just not done.
But the Federal Reserve has telegraphed its intention over time to move interest rates higher, and it has these dots, which are essentially the forecasts of the members of the committee, which suggest that interest rates would rise over time but at an undetermined pace.
We have discussed divergence in the past precisely because conditions changed so much in Canada relative to in the United States. In particular, when oil prices fell, that was of course a negative for Canada but it was actually a positive for the United States, because even though they have an oil sector, they're a net oil importer, whereas we're an exporter. In those conditions, in 2015 the Bank of Canada cut rates twice while the Federal Reserve actually raised rates that year.
That's about as sharp a point of divergence as one can imagine, and that's why we have flexible exchange rates to deal with those kinds of shocks.
Moving forward, I would say, roughly speaking, that Canada has just now gotten to the stage it was at before the oil price collapse, almost three years ago now. The end of 2014 was when oil prices really started to crumble.
I think that over that two and a half years or so, the U.S. economy has gotten out in front of us, whereas we were roughly in the same place when the oil price did go down. Now we're that couple of years behind in the cycle, if you like, compared to where they are. That's why I was expressing the hope before that we will do something similar to what's happened in the U.S. They were able to grow beyond what most people thought was their capacity limit by pulling people back into the workforce, and that's exactly what we think will happen here. It's very hard to quantify. We just have to continue to watch it happen in real time.