It's true that the Canadian-U.S. economies are highly integrated, and we're to a lesser degree integrated with lots of economies, but the one kind of disturbance that breaks that integration is the one we came through, which is the oil price shock. The decline in oil prices is fundamentally good for the U.S. economy, because it's a net importer of oil, and fundamentally negative for the Canadian economy, because we're a major net oil exporter.
That difference caused a divergence between the two economies, and it's the reason that our progress in reducing our unemployment rate stopped at the time of the oil price shock. In the U.S., progress in reducing theirs actually picked up speed, and so their economy has reached full employment far before we have. This is a divergence in levels or of point in the cycle, and not necessarily of growth rates.
In that context, it's very important that we be clear that we are conducting independent monetary policy. We can't just follow the U.S., because if we did, we would for sure undershoot our inflation target, because we would have excess capacity. That is one of the reasons we have a flexible exchange rate: to give us that policy independence. If we had a fixed exchange rate, we wouldn't have any.