Bank researchers have found a promising tool for assessing Canada's vulnerability to crisis: a combination of growth in domestic business credit and real estate prices that tends to be a good predictor of changes to the Bank's financial stress indicator one to two years in the future.
However, this combination was unable to predict the current crisis because the root causes came from outside Canada. There is ongoing work at the Bank to refine these tools, which could prove important, not  4  M. Misina, P. St-Amant, and G. Tkacz, "Credit, Asset Prices, and Financial Stress in Canada", Financial System Review (Ottawa: Bank of Canada, December 2008): 29-33.