during the pandemic have struggled to find work through no fault of their own. governments are playing a leading role in supporting workers. emergency relief measures are replacing incomes from jobs lost, and wage subsidies are keeping businesses and workers connected. strengthening the social safety net for families, particularly by increasing access to child care and reducing its cost, will - 9help more women return to the labour force and remain there. 6 as the labour market rebounds and restructures at the same time, reducing the risk of scarring points to the importance of active labour market policies — policies that improve matching and give more people better access to good jobs. 7 the bank is supporting spending in the economy and helping facilitate investments in workers and other forms of capital by keeping borrowing costs low for households and businesses. with a complete recovery still a long way off, monetary policy will need to provide stimulus for a considerable period. we have committed to keeping our policy interest rate at the effective lower bound until economic slack is absorbed so that our inflation target is sustainably achieved. and we have backed up this commitment with our program of large - scale government bond purchases. a complete recovery — a shared recovery — is in everyone ’ s interest. a shared recovery is self - reinforcing. it draws more workers into the labour force. it leads to more investment. it generates more potential growth. and it creates space for the economy to expand faster without building inflationary pressure. i began this speech by highlighting the health of canada ’ s labour market before the pandemic. unemployment had been around 40 - year lows for a couple of years. based on past economic cycles, we would have expected inflationary pressure to begin to rise. but inflation wasn ’ t threatening to take off. as the pandemic recedes and the recovery continues, we will keep that experience in mind. monetary policy can continue to support demand in order to minimize scarring and bring as many people into the work force as possible. conclusion it ’ s time for me to conclude. the covid - 19 pandemic has taken a tremendous toll here and around the world, in lives and livelihoods lost. and it has disproportionately affected highcontact service - sector jobs that many women and youth occupy. as canada achieves widespread vaccinations, we expect the economy to rebound, and many of these jobs will return. but we are not going back to the same economy we had before. some businesses

alan greenspan : budget process reforms testimony by mr alan greenspan, chairman of the board of governors of the us federal reserve system, before the budget committee, us senate, washington dc, 21 april 2005. * * * mr. chairman, senator conrad, and members of the committee, i am pleased to be here today to offer my views on the federal budget and related issues. i want to emphasize that i speak for myself and not necessarily for the federal reserve. the u. s. economy delivered a solid performance in 2004, and thus far this year, activity appears to be expanding at a reasonably good pace. however, the positive short - term economic outlook is playing out against a backdrop of concern about the prospects for the federal budget, especially over the longer run. indeed, the unified budget ran a deficit equal to about 3 - 1 / 2 percent of gross domestic product in fiscal 2004, and federal debt held by the public as a percent of gdp has risen noticeably since it bottomed out in 2001. to be sure, the cyclical component of the deficit should narrow as the economic expansion proceeds and incomes rise. and the recent pace of the ramp - up in spending on defense and homeland security is not expected to continue indefinitely. but, as the latest projections from the administration and the congressional budget office suggest, our budget position is unlikely to improve substantially in the coming years unless major deficit - reducing actions are taken. in my judgment, the necessary choices will be especially difficult to implement without the restoration of a set of procedural restraints on the budget - making process. for about a decade, the rules laid out in the budget enforcement act of 1990 and in the later modifications and extensions of the act provided a framework that helped the congress establish a better fiscal balance. however, the brief emergence of surpluses in the late 1990s eroded the will to adhere to these rules, which were aimed specifically at promoting deficit reduction rather than at the broader goal of setting out a commonly agreed - upon standard for determining whether the nation was living within its fiscal means. many of the provisions that helped restrain budgetary decisionmaking in the 1990s - in particular, the limits on discretionary spending and the paygo requirements - were violated ever more frequently ; finally, in 2002, they were allowed to expire. reinstating a structure like the one provided by the budget enforcement act would signal a renewed commitment to fiscal restraint and help restore discipline to the annual budgeting process. such a step would be even more meaningful if it