People ‘Need a Break’: Doug Ford Calls for Interest Rate Cuts
A day before the Bank of Canada is set to announce interest rates, Ontario Premier Doug Ford urged the central bank, “It’s time” he said, to lower interest rates.
“People are hurting. They need a break,” Ford said in the short tweet.
The Bank of Canada is expected to hold the rate at 5% when it makes the announcement on Wednesday.
Ford and the rest of Canada may have to wait a bit longer — the parliamentary budget officer’s report forecasts April as the beginning of rate cuts while many analysts don’t expect it to happen until around June.
“We’ve seen very little, almost no economic growth whatsoever last year,” Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives senior economist David Macdonald told CTV News Channel in January. “There’s no indication that we’re going to immediately see growth at the start of this year.”
The central bank’s target inflation rate before it cuts rates has long been 2%. In January, the annual inflation rate came closer to this target at 2.9%, dropping from 3.4% the month before.
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