more recently, the imf has been perceived by some countries as being irrelevant, and its activities have sparked resentment and outright hostility in other countries, including some in latin america. a major source of this hostility and perception of irrelevance is the fact that the fund has not evolved in step with the global economy. and this lack of evolution contributed to the fund's inability to prevent or even to mitigate international crises such as the asian crisis of 1997 and the argentinean crisis in 2001. in the absence of global co - operation to update the rules of the game, and an effective imf to support these rules, we have seen a drift towards regional initiatives. and rather than using the imf to efficiently pool international reserves, countries such as china have set out to accumulate very high levels of reserves. i have made several speeches in other places about the need to strengthen the surveillance function of the imf, to improve its governance, and to make it more representative of today's global economy. i won't repeat those arguments here ; if you are interested in the details of our recommendations for the imf, i'd invite you to read the lecture i gave one year ago at princeton university. the point i want to make today is that strengthening the imf could help some countries – including those in latin america – to willingly support and engage with the fund. and this would increase the chances that these countries would willingly engage in the global economy. unfortunately, in recent years, the attention of canada and the united states has focused mainly on asia. we have worked hard to help the asian economies integrate into the global economy and take their rightful place at the policy - makers'table. we've encouraged these countries to play by the rules of the game with respect to international trade, in particular, by supporting their accession to the wto. but at the same time, we have become concerned that these nations, notably china, are not always following the rules of the game with respect to monetary and exchange rate issues. rather than deal with this issue through a strengthened imf, we in the g - 7, including the united states, have often dealt with it on a country - bycountry basis. my contention is that all of us in the g - 7, particularly the united states – which truly believes in a liberal financial and trade order – should lead the effort to strengthen multilateral institutions, such as the imf. not only would a stronger imf be

stephen s poloz : release of the monetary policy report opening statement by mr stephen s poloz, governor of the bank of canada, at the press conference following the release of the monetary policy report, ottawa, ontario, 15 july 2015. * * * good morning. senior deputy governor wilkins and i are happy to be here with you again to answer your questions about today ’ s interest rate announcement, and our latest monetary policy report ( mpr ). let me begin with a few remarks around the issues that were most important to the governing council ’ s deliberations. since our last mpr in april, global economic developments have been quite disappointing, and these have led to a significant downgrade of our estimate of canadian economic growth for 2015. there were three factors behind this downgrade : first, canadian oil producers have lowered their long - term outlook for global oil prices, and have cut their plans for investment spending significantly more than previously announced. second, china ’ s economy is undergoing a structural transition to slower, domestic - driven growth, which is reducing canadian exports of a range of other commodities. third, canada ’ s non - resource exports have also faltered in recent months. while this is partly due to the first - quarter setback in the u. s. economy, it ’ s still a puzzle that merits further study. given the collapse in oil prices, and declines in some other key non - energy commodities, the economy is now operating on two distinct growth tracks : the resource track and the nonresource track. these tracks are not independent – the cancellation of an investment in the oil patch will often lead to a hit in the manufacturing sector, for example. but we can do some rough decompositions to illustrate the situation. i draw your attention to chart 18, on page 19 of the mpr. there we can see the sharp drop in oil and gas output, which constitutes 10 per cent of our economy, and the slowdown in non - energy commodity production, which represents a further 8 per cent. the remaining 82 per cent is seeing steady growth, although it has moderated slightly so far this year, due to the setback in the u. s and spillovers from the resource sector. as the non - resource track regains momentum, it is expected to become the dominant trend at the aggregate level. we expected this to begin in the second quarter. but it did not, because of the three factors i listed above. a major shift in a country ’