Bank of Canada (BoC) Governor Tiff Macklem comments on the policy outlook following the BoC's decision to leave its policy rate unchanged at 4.5% in April.

Key takeaways

"We need a period of weak growth."

"Outlook for growth has not changed very much."

"We are not forecasting a major contraction."

"You can't rule out that there's going to be a couple quarters of small negatives."

"Our baseline forecast is for a positive but weak growth and declining inflation."

"The implied expectation in the market that we're going to be cutting our policy rate later in the year. That doesn't look today like the most likely scenario to us."