By Promit Mukherjee and Steve Scherer
OTTAWA, Feb 6 (Reuters)- Bank of Canada (BoC) Governor Tiff Macklem said on Tuesday more time was needed for monetary policy to ease price pressures while he warned that the biggest driver of prices – shelter costs – cannot be tamed by borrowing costs.
“We can see monetary policy is working to bring down inflation… and we need to give monetary policy more time to ease the remaining price pressures,” he said during a speech at the Montreal Council of Foreign Relations.
Canada’s central bank has increased its key overnight rate 10 times in 17 months to a 22-year high of 5%. It has held the rate constant for its last four meetings. The next policy announcement is in March.
While this has helped ease inflation from a high of 8.1% in June 2022 to 3.4% in December, the path to its 2% target has been slow.
Canada’s acute housing shortfall has pushed up the costs of buying or renting a property in Canada,…
