I could go on for a long time, but I know I don't have a lot of time, so I'm going to keep this brief. The big burst of inflation we saw in 2022—up to 8%—started largely as a result of global factors. The global demand for goods was very strong. People couldn't get the services because of COVID. They couldn't go to the gym, so they bought gym equipment. All of those goods had to be produced and shipped. At the same time that the supply chain was still really gummed up because of COVID, Russia's unprovoked attack on Ukraine further increased oil prices and food prices. In the beginning, it was largely because of global factors. Those have actually come down significantly.
The second factor was that as the economy reopened from COVID—and this wasn't unique to Canadians—people everywhere wanted to catch up on all the things they had missed out on. They wanted to go to restaurants. They wanted to take holidays. Companies simply could not keep up with demand. They couldn't hire people fast enough, so we got a big burst of more domestically created inflation.
Now the inflation is more domestic and less global. We've raised rates forcefully. Doing that has slowed the economy and—to come back to where I started—it's working. Demand has slowed and supply has caught up. That has increased our confidence that we've raised rates enough to get us back to 2% inflation. Once we get more assurance that we're on that path back to 2% inflation, we can start thinking about cutting interest rates, but we're not there yet.