“If you’ve got a mortgage or if you’re considering making a major purchase, or you’re a business and you’re considering making an investment, you can be confident rates will be low for a long time,” Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said at a press conference in July 2020.
Speaking to the Chamber of Commerce in Calgary on Thursday, Macklem addressed the country's high inflation rate, noting that one reason it may not be coming back down to the bank's 2% target is because the rate hikes are taking longer than expected to work. Another possibility, he said, "is that monetary policy is not yet restrictive enough to restore price stability," meaning another hike could be needed to further limit Canadians' spending power and rein in demand.
Mortgages are the largest contributor to Canadian inflation, with Statistics Canada reporting a 30.6% annual increase in mortgage costs in July — the largest increase on record. Although home sales slid 0.7% month over month in July, the Canadian Real Estate Association that they were still up 8.7% year over year, with the average sale price up 1.1% from June — "a larger-than-normal increase for a single month," CREA said.