First of all, I want to thank you for highlighting that there is uncertainty around these forecasts. They are forecasts. We do our analysis and we're transparent with Canadians, but there are risks on both sides of these.
I'll remind you that our band is 1% to 3%. We actually had inflation that was well below the band. At this time last year it was negative, actually, for a few months. It has been around the lower end of the band for quite a few months—around 1%. We do think it will go up temporarily, as I indicated, to 3%, due to a number of technical factors, before coming back down.
One of the reasons we put out a forecast and we are so transparent is so that the market and Canadians can see if things are evolving the way we think they're going to evolve. If inflation starts to go higher than we thought, and particularly if that turns out not to be temporary and it turns out to be more durable, it would suggest that the economy is tighter than we thought and that there is not as much excess capacity. We would start to reassess our evaluations.
You can't just look, though, at what inflation is doing. You have to see why it is doing that. When there are temporary technical factors, as your expert witness suggested, we will look through those. Monetary policy takes time to work. It doesn't make sense to overreact to temporary factors that are going to work their way out.
If we saw that inflation was sustainably higher than our forecast and sustainably higher than our target, yes, we would react. We have the tools and we know how to control inflation.