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Finance committee Thank you very much, Chair. It's a pleasure to be here. Good morning. Bonjour, tout le monde. The Bank of Canada's commitment to Canadians is to promote the economic and financial welfare of the country. One way that we do this is to communicate our objectives openly and effec
June 6th, 2013Committee meeting
Stephen S. Poloz
Finance committee Thank you for your congratulations, and for your question. The short answer to that question is no. Monetary policy independence is enshrined. It has been since central banks were first created; that's why they were created. The bank's operational independence for monetary polic
June 6th, 2013Committee meeting
Stephen S. Poloz
Finance committee The Bank of Canada is answerable to Parliament in the same way as any other government agency, so personally, I don't really see a need for that sort of exemption. As I said, I think it is aligned with the way we behave already. We have an oversight board from the private sector,
June 6th, 2013Committee meeting
Stephen S. Poloz
Finance committee In general I'd say I do agree with that. Given the circumstances we were faced with, we were very fortunate that we had the capacity for households to in effect step up and expand their spending. As I said in my opening remarks, that is what gave us a buffer or cushion underneath
June 6th, 2013Committee meeting
Stephen S. Poloz
Finance committee I certainly would.
June 6th, 2013Committee meeting
Stephen S. Poloz
Finance committee That is fair to say. I'm a lot older than I look.
June 6th, 2013Committee meeting
Stephen S. Poloz
Finance committee No, I am from Oshawa.
June 6th, 2013Committee meeting
Stephen S. Poloz
Finance committee Like my predecessors, I will not offer a running commentary on the Canadian dollar, where it is and where it should be. I would say though that the EDC forecast is run through a process that I very much respect and find helpful, a very wide-ranging analysis that gives us that kin
June 6th, 2013Committee meeting
Stephen S. Poloz
Finance committee Well, thank you for your question. It is an unusual one. It's caught me a little off guard, I'll admit. Let me say that I worked very hard—and I suppose that culture of hard work I do owe to my parents, who worked very hard and always thought that if I worked hard and did well i
June 6th, 2013Committee meeting
Stephen S. Poloz
Finance committee I would describe it more as a tool kit. If you're a Sunday hobbyist and you have only half the tools you need, you end up going over to Home Depot to get something extra to finish that job. Along the way, you collect a tool kit. It begins with an intense interest in things mone
June 6th, 2013Committee meeting
Stephen S. Poloz
Finance committee In the conditions we found ourselves in, I would absolutely. I have only so many tools in the tool kit. In fact, at the Bank of Canada we really have only one, so you can't control everything. Fortunately there's a bigger team that's concerned with financial stability. So in the
June 6th, 2013Committee meeting
Stephen S. Poloz
Finance committee It is obviously an important risk. I'm not going to rank my risks but it is an important risk. It is a risk because we don't think the current situation will last forever. At some point, interest rates are going to rise to a more normal level, and at that time, I hope the people
June 6th, 2013Committee meeting
Stephen S. Poloz
Finance committee I did preface my remarks by saying “in the conditions we found ourselves in”. That is something that I think you would look at on a continuous basis depending on the context in which we found ourselves. Certainly for what we see right now and for the foreseeable future, this is t
June 6th, 2013Committee meeting
Stephen S. Poloz
Finance committee I won't comment on the methodologies that credit-rating agencies use. But it is their job, at least—people pay them for this—to look out and see whether the fundamentals of an institution are strengthening or easing back. In the kind of environment we find ourselves, any analyst
June 6th, 2013Committee meeting
Stephen S. Poloz
Finance committee I think the risks that a Canadian bank would face today would be similar to the ones that we face. We believe that the world economy is strengthening. All the signs that we look at suggest that countries are either at bottom or strengthening, which is—
June 6th, 2013Committee meeting
Stephen S. Poloz