easing works let ’ s turn our attention now to the mechanics of qe. every week, the government of canada sells bonds to financial institutions — mostly commercial banks — that have been approved to participate in their auctions. under qe, the bank buys these bonds from auction participants, not directly from the government. the bank conducts qe operations through a reverse auction. when you think of an auction, you probably imagine someone selling goods, with people bidding to purchase them. when we conduct qe, we call it a reverse auction because it ’ s the opposite : we hold an auction to buy — not sell — government bonds. we announce our intention to buy a certain quantity of bonds on a given day. we then receive offers from market participants who wish to sell us some of the bonds they hold. the bidding process is competitive, and we typically receive many more offers to sell than we are willing to buy. this is good because it means we can purchase bonds that are offered at the lowest price. we are currently buying a minimum of $ 4 billion a week of bonds through this process. overall, we have purchased slightly more than $ 180 billion since the program was launched in march. that ’ s a big number. and it ’ s true that our qe program and other asset purchases led to a substantial increase in the bank ’ s balance sheet. but despite all the purchases we ’ ve made, it is worth noting that the value of the assets we hold for the size of the canadian economy remains relatively low by international standards — roughly two - thirds of that of the bank of england or us federal reserve ( chart 1 ). - 4chart 1 : the bank of canada ’ s balance sheet remains relatively low central bank total assets as a percentage of a four - quarter average of gross domestic product, quarterly data % % bank of japan ( left scale ) us federal reserve ( right scale ) bank of england ( right scale ) bank of canada ( right scale ) european central bank ( right scale ) reserve bank of australia ( right scale ) sources : bank of canada, bloomberg finance l. p., national sources via haver analytics and bank of canada calculations last observation : 2020q3 of course, when we buy these bonds through our auction, we need to pay for them. but we don ’ t print new bank notes to do so. rather, we pay for them by issuing a particular form of liability. for anyone who knows the basic principles of accounting, you know our

on this type of work in the future, to help us better identify spillovers. a few minutes ago, i said that the imf should be the forum where shareholders gather to collectively develop the appropriate rules of the game. i also said that it should be an independent, impartial umpire, ready to call out countries that break the rules. in other words, the imf should have a secretariat function and an umpire function. imf surveillance can, and must, do a better job of supporting both of these functions. let me start with the so - called umpire role. this is one area where the imf has consistently fallen short of the mark. too often, surveillance has shied away from the " ruthless truth - telling " that keynes — one of the main architects of bretton woods — called for. 4 instead of making the tough calls about the rules of the game, the imf has sat in the umpire's chair and simply asked the players whether they thought that their shot was in or out. this needs to change. the imf needs to be able to make calls impartially about whether countries are playing by market - based rules of the game. this would help policy - makers sitting around the table to decide what actions should come next. it would also help the market to apply the appropriate discipline to a country not playing by the rules. like any good umpire, the imf should apply the same judgment to all players in the global economy. much has been said about the way china and other countries continue to operate with a fixed exchange rate. i have previously argued that while greater exchange rate flexibility would be good for china, its citizens, and the global economy, the chinese authorities must be allowed to choose the exchange rate regime they feel is best for them. but what the authorities should not do is frustrate market forces by thwarting the adjustment of real exchange rates through sterilization of their foreign exchange interventions. by " sterilization, " i mean offsetting the effect of those interventions on the domestic money supply. last month, u. s. treasury undersecretary tim adams called on the imf to put more emphasis on exchange rates in its surveillance activities. 5 i certainly agree that the imf needs to put greater emphasis on the interdependencies in the system, and exchange rates are clearly a part of those interdependencies. but we have also seen examples of industrialized economies choosing to break the