fall ahead of that large maturity, we will need a transition process where asset purchases help to offset the sharp and sudden drop. that means we will need to restart our normal - course asset purchases gradually, and well before september. as a result, we expect to announce the end of qt and the associated restart of our business - as - usual asset purchases in the first half of this year. when we make that announcement, we will also publish a market notice with more details about the asset acquisition process, including the timing of our initial purchases and expected amounts. given this timeline, i expect we will be the first major central bank, or among the first, to finish unwinding its pandemic - related qe asset purchases. that reflects three considerations. first, going into the pandemic, our balance sheet was smaller as a proportion of gross domestic product relative to other central banks because we hadn ’ t used qe before. second, we ended qe earlier than others. and third, the maturity profile of our asset holdings coming out of our covid actions was shorter, so qt has gone faster in canada than in most other jurisdictions. as you can see from this chart, in terms of assets as a share of the economy, our balance sheet is already smaller than those in other major jurisdictions ( chart 3 ). the estimated range for settlement balances will evolve over time once we resume purchasing assets to offset the growth of currency in circulation, we will aim to manage our balance sheet in a way that keeps settlement balances in the range of $ 50 billion to $ 70 billion. but there may be brief periods when the amount falls below or rises above this range. 4 i also want to stress that, over the long term, demand for settlement balances will continue to evolve as the financial system evolves. so the amount that the major banks and other lynx participants want to hold will likely vary as well. this means we will probably adjust our estimated range from time to time, possibly both up and down, to reflect changes in settlement balance demand. this way, we can make sure that our framework for implementing monetary policy remains effective at keeping the overnight rate in markets close to our target for the policy rate. 4 in steady state, settlement balances will fluctuate in the new range due to autonomous variations in our other major liabilities. for example, fluctuations in the amount of funds the government of canada puts in its deposit account with us will cause offsetting fluctuations

to have the amount of our floating - rate assets, mostly term repos and t - bills, match the amount of our floating - rate liabilities, which include settlement balances. and we will aim to have the size of our bond holdings roughly match currency in circulation, given that currency is assumed to be a permanent liability. although our asset purchase plan will be designed to ramp up to this steady - state composition, our asset growth is limited by how quickly currency in circulation grows. so we may not reach that composition until around 2030. i want to emphasize that we will not be buying assets on an active basis to stimulate the economy like we did during the pandemic when we were doing qe. our normal asset purchases before the pandemic were not qe. and our normal asset purchases after qt ends will not be qe either. now let ’ s get into some of the specifics of our purchasing plans. when we start growing our assets again for business - as - usual balance sheet management, we will start with term repo operations. these will be 1 - and 3month terms, and we will gradually ramp up the amounts through bi - weekly - 8operations. t - bill purchases will take place in the primary market. we expect them to resume in the fourth quarter of this year, initially with relatively small amounts through each bi - weekly goc debt auction. goc bond purchases will likely not start until toward the end of 2026 — at the earliest. but, as we get closer to purchasing bonds, we will announce the timing well in advance. when we start buying goc bonds again in the normal course of business, we will do so in the secondary market, via reverse auctions. secondary market purchases align with benchmark practices at other major central banks that buy their home jurisdiction ’ s government bonds as part of their normal - course balance sheet management. and there are advantages to doing it this way compared with buying bonds in the primary market — that is, at goc auctions — which was our practice before the pandemic. one advantage is that secondary market purchases will give us the flexibility to buy any goc bonds outstanding across the full spectrum of maturities, rather than being limited to what ’ s on offer at individual goc bond auctions. this will allow us to replace maturing bonds with bonds from the maturity buckets that we want, which will help us rebalance the maturity structure of our balance sheet more