the unexpected economic strength has been the resilience and adaptability of canadian households and businesses. lockdowns through the second wave had much less economic impact than they did through the first wave. and as restrictions were eased, the economy bounced back quickly with substantial job gains in february and march. the third wave is a new setback, and we can expect some of these job gains to be reversed. but the performance of the economy in recent months has increased our confidence in the underlying strength in the recovery. with the vaccine rollout progressing, we are expecting strong consumption - led growth in the second half of this year. fiscal stimulus from the federal and provincial governments will also make an important contribution to growth. strong growth in foreign demand and higher commodity prices are expected to drive a solid rebound in exports and business investment, leading to a more broad - based recovery. overall, we now project that the economy will expand by around 6½ percent this year, slowing to about 3¾ percent in 2022 and 3¼ percent in 2023. 1 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches you won ’ t be surprised to hear that we also spent some time discussing what is happening in the housing market. the pandemic has led to some unique circumstances. with so many households working and studying at home, we see many people wanting more living space. and interest rates have been unusually low, making borrowing more affordable. while the resulting house price increases are rooted in fundamentals, we are seeing some signs of extrapolative expectations and speculative behaviour. given elevated levels of household debt and the risks that households may overstretch in the face of rising housing prices, we welcome the recent proposal by the superintendent of financial institutions to introduce a fixed floor to the minimum qualifying rate for uninsured mortgages. new measures just announced in the federal budget will also be helpful. we are watching developments in the housing market very closely, and we will have more to say about this in our financial system review next month. the governing council also spent time discussing estimates of the amount of slack in the economy and the outlook for potential growth. with the economy proving more resilient to the pandemic and vaccines rolling out, we are hopeful there will be less labour - market scarring and less lost capacity than we earlier feared. bankruptcies have been low, and surveys of investment intentions and our own business outlook survey both suggest that many companies are speeding up investments in digital technologies. these factors are reflected in our decision to

carolyn wilkins : opening remarks - “ toward the 2021 renewal of the monetary policy framework ” opening remarks ( delivered virtually ) by ms carolyn a wilkins, senior deputy governor of the bank of canada, at the bank of canada workshop “ toward the 2021 renewal of the monetary policy framework ”, ottawa, ontario, 26 august 2020. * * * bonjour tout le monde, et bienvenue a notre colloque virtuel. thank you all for joining our workshop on the renewal of the bank of canada ’ s monetary policy framework in 2021. renewal is just around the corner — hard to believe. bank researchers have made a lot of progress since we kicked off our workplan in 2018. that seems like a thousand years ago given the current health and economic context. at that time, in a speech at mcgill ’ s max bell school of public policy, i laid out the main challenges confronting us as we did our work. we are looking forward to the conference they will host on this topic in september. one challenge i laid out in that speech has become crystal clear today : central banks are likely to run out of conventional firepower if we see an economic downturn in a low - interest - rate world. another challenge is that long periods of low interest rates encourage investors to take on risk that may be excessive. we see that now with high levels of indebtedness, not only in canada, but around the world. global debt - to - gdp is nearly 350 percent — much higher than at the time of the global financial crisis. these challenges led us to focus our research on three questions : first : can we articulate another framework that will do a better job than the inflation - targeting framework that ’ s been in place for over 25 years? to answer this, we are running a horse race among alternative frameworks for monetary policy. these include average inflation targeting, price - level targeting, an employment - inflation dual mandate and nominal gdp growth and level targeting. another possibility is to raise the inflation target. we are evaluating these frameworks against a clear set of criteria. of course, we are looking to see how well they can achieve stability in the economy and in prices so that businesses and families can make decisions with more confidence. we ’ re considering the implications for accountability, communications and credibility. we ’ re also looking at more novel criteria : how each framework impacts the distribution of income and wealth, and how robust the frameworks are in good economic times and bad. you