Finance committee  Thank you. In late fiscal 2008, the Bank of Canada provided a maximum of approximately $40 billion to the Canadian financial system in the form of exceptional liquidity. Now the amount of that liquidity is approximately $26 billion. So there has been a significant drop, but that

Finance committee  First, in the money and capital markets, the banks and caisses centrales are continuing to provide their liquidity or to transmit that of the Bank of Canada to the markets. That's absolutely crucial in the case of commercial paper, for example, and for other commercial bonds. The

Finance committee  I think it's the Bank of Canada's mandate to achieve the inflation target and to conduct monetary policy to achieve the inflation target. I will say that in a situation where we are at the effective lower bound, as we are today, there is a need for even heightened communication a

Finance committee  Your question is absolutely on point. The IMF estimate, just for the record, is $4.1 trillion on assets spread globally, but a large proportion of those troubled assets, according to the IMF, is in the United Sates. So the problem still exists. For absolute clarity, it is still

Finance committee  What was the nice bit?

Finance committee  Yes, thank you for mentioning that. Just to re-emphasize that point, we did see an important move in interest rates further out the yield curve as a result of that commitment, which should provide considerable additional stimulus to the economy. In terms of the inflation outlook

Finance committee  Thank you very much, Chair. Good afternoon, committee members. Paul and I are very pleased to appear before this committee to discuss the bank's views on the economy and our monetary policy stance. Before we take your questions, I would like to give you just a few of the highl

Finance committee  I'm going to get two minutes. You've been busy, Monsieur Bernier. I'll mention a couple of things very rapidly; we can have a deeper discussion later. First, as you referenced, there's a very clear accountability framework for the Bank of Canada. The 2% inflation target is an

Finance committee  That is a question that should be asked of the government.

Finance committee  I want to pick up on the asset mix. The first thing is that we have these term PRA relationships with financial institutions to provide liquidity, as I mentioned. These are basically repo relationships, and they're secured by a range of very high-quality assets, most of which are

Finance committee  It was clear in October that the situation was beginning to deteriorate, as you mentioned. We made some very radical decisions, including an inter-FAD reduction which would not normally have been on the agenda, and a coordinated reduction with the other major central banks of the

Finance committee  We absolutely must change the compensation system for large financial corporations. The important thing is to have mid-term compensation with mid-term objectives, and not short-term objectives as is currently the case. That was the case in my former company; that is one of the di

Finance committee  The short answer is no, absolutely not; we have considerable flexibility. We have flexibility in our overnight rate, and there are other interventions that we could make if it were appropriate to do so, but those other steps would only be taken in the context of our inflation tar

Finance committee  In the medium term and the long term, absolutely.

Finance committee  First, we could move further if we saw fit and we've just taken a decision. I'm not going to take another one sitting at the table. But I might ask my colleague Mr. Jenkins to talk about the pass-through of some of these moves we have made, because that is being underestimated be