Interest rate cuts likely to be gradual amid inflation risks: Bank of Canada – National [Video]

The Bank of Canada’s top policymakers have a “diversity of views” about when they expect interest rate cuts to start, but the meeting minutes from the governing council’s latest decision show agreement on the overall pace of easing.

The central bank on Wednesday released the deliberations from its most recent policy rate decision on April 10, where the bank’s benchmark interest rate held steady at 5.0 per cent for a sixth straight meeting.

As Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem indicated to reporters after the decision itself, the governing council was “encouraged” by recent progress in taming inflation, according to the release.

Heading into that decision, annual inflation had cooled in Canada to 2.8 per cent, with signs of easing in the central bank’s preferred metrics of core inflation as well. The headline inflation figure ticked up to 2.9 per cent in March, Statistics Canada reported a week after the rate hold.

Macklem …