Third, the Bank promotes the safety and efficiency of Canada's financial system. It provides banking services to commercial banks and oversees the systems that financial institutions use to transfer funds and settle their accounts. Finally, the Bank of Canada conducts monetary policy in order to preserve the confidence of Canadians in the value of their money by controlling inflation.
But others pointed to low or even negative savings rates coupled with a growing current account deficit as unsustainable imbalances. In the introduction to our Annual Report in 1998, we wrote that it was clear that at some point a correction had to happen but that it was hard to predict its trigger and its timing.