The Bank of Canada is inviting Canadian universities to nominate exceptional academics for its 2019 Fellowship and Governor’s awards. Presented annually, these awards distinguish and support the work of academics who are making exemplary contributions to economic and financial research in Canada.

Because issues related to central banking extend beyond traditional monetary policy theory, the Fellowship Program is designed to foster research excellence in a broad range of fields related to the Bank’s core functions: monetary policy, financial system, currency and funds management. The program also supports collaboration between Bank staff and leading academics at Canadian post-secondary institutions.

It is great to visit Regina during the waning days of summer. I would like to thank Chris Dekker of the Saskatchewan Trade & Export Partnership for the invitation to give an update on Canada’s economic performance, and discuss the Bank of Canada’s interest-rate announcement yesterday.

The big picture over the summer has been that the global economy is doing well, despite some troubling developments on the trade front. Many countries around the world are continuing to grow and put people back to work. Here in Canada the economy has shown its resilience, operating near capacity for the past year—the first time that has happened since the global financial crisis.

Next week marks 10 years since Lehman Brothers failed; and, after many fits and starts, this period of sustained growth seems like it has been a long time coming. Since the crisis, people in Saskatchewan have also been forced to deal with the consequences of the plunge in oil prices that started in 2014, and lower prices for many other commodities. The Saskatchewan economy returned to growth last year, and it is good to see the expansion here is continuing.

Transparency in monetary policy can help build trust with the public and financial markets and promote a more resilient economy, Governor Stephen S. Poloz said in a speech today.

“We can be clearer in our communications with the general public,” Governor Poloz told the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce. “And we will be as clear as we can be with financial markets, always guided by what we know and by what we do not know.”

Governor Poloz said that under the Bank’s inflation-targeting framework, the Bank has progressively taken many steps to communicate in a more transparent way. This has built an important reservoir of trust for the Bank.

The Bank of Canada announced today that it will partner with the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) to deepen its knowledge of leading technologies.

This partnership is motivated by the Bank’s 2019–21 Medium-Term Plan, which focuses on better understanding the digital economy and the technological transformation of financial services and on strengthening innovation in its own operations as a central bank.

In particular, the Bank’s partnership agreement with CDL will enable it to stay abreast of developments in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, crypto-asset technologies and quantum computing. The Bank of Canada will be an AI Stream partner and participate in both the CDL-Toronto and CDL-Montreal programs for a three-year period. The partnership will allow Bank staff to better understand these technologies and their applications. In addition, the Bank plans to leverage the CDL program by inviting participating experts to share their knowledge with staff.