During the period 1988 through 1997, we took some important steps towards improving both our monetary and fiscal policies. The Bank of Canada, responding to the high and unpredictable inflation rates of the 1970s and early 1980s, adopted at the end of the 1980s a monetary policy aimed at achieving price stability.
As I just noted, the conventional wisdom was that there was a zero lower bound for nominal interest rates, but the demonstration by a few European central banks, including the Riksbank, that such limitation could be overcome to some degree led the Bank of Japan to adopt the new policy framework.