Comments in the opening statement

  • Financial vulnerability concerns weighed against cut
  • Overall excess capacity in the Canadian economy has increased, which will bring a degree of downward pressure on inflation
  • We received a string of disappointing consumer readings
  • BOC weighed risk that inflation could fall short of target against risk that lower rate path would lead to higher financial vulnerabilities
  • Slow down in late 2019 might indicate greater passthrough from global weakness. If so, better signs from global growth should be positive
  • Much of BOC deliberations focused on persistence of slowdown
  • There are some downside indications on consumer but these aren't our baseline
  • Excess capacity is not uniformly balanced across country

More dovish stuff from Poloz, who indicates a cut was on the table.