I think it is important to place these concerns into some context, so that Canadians can better understand the risks and implications of price shifts in the economy. That is why I'm going to concentrate most of my comments today on this subject. After all, the goal of the Bank of Canada's monetary policy is to maintain low, stable, and predictable inflation.
Indeed, the Federal Reserve under Paul Volcker's leadership starting in 1979 did the very heavy lifting against inflation. The major contribution of the Federal Reserve to fashioning the events of the past decade or so, I believe, was to recognize that the U.S. and global economies were evolving in profound ways and to calibrate inflation-containing policies to gain most effectively from those changes.