Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said that while the federal government’s decision to trim immigration targets would have a modest effect on growth, the impact on inflation is likely limited.
On Thursday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government announced it would lower the target for the number of permanent residents in 2025 and 2026. Coupled with a planned reduction in the number of temporary foreign workers and students, the government expects population to turn flat after years of record growth.
In a callback from Washington, where he was attending October meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, Macklem told reporters that population growth impacts both supply and demand in the economy in “roughly the same way” over a longer a period of time.
While gross domestic product growth may slow with fewer consumers, the labour supply will also contract, he added. That’s likely to lower potential growth, leaving the impact on price pressures little changed.
“One thing I would stress is that the inflation forecast itself is not that affected by population growth,” Macklem said on Friday.
He also suggested that the central bank had already incorporated a considerable slowing of population growth, saying he “wouldn’t overplay” the differences between the bank’s forecasts and the announcements of the federal government.
The bank had estimated 1.7% population growth in the next two years, compared with the Trudeau government’s expectation of a 0.2% reduction in 2025 and 2026.
Macklem added officials will continue to update and monitor developments, saying that there’s “uncertainty in just how quickly these things play out.”
“We’ll be revising as we gain more confidence in exactly what’s going to happen,” he said.
On Wednesday, policymakers cut the benchmark overnight rate by half a percentage point to 3.75%, accelerating the pace of monetary easing as the central bank sees inflation settling around the 2% inflation forecast over the next year.
“Overall, we see the risks around our forecast as balanced, and if the economy evolves broadly in line with our forecast, we anticipate cutting our policy rate further,” Macklem said.
On rate divergence, Macklem said he’s currently “comfortable” with the difference in timing and pace of rate cuts between his central bank and the Federal Reserve. That’s despite the loonie now trading against the greenback near the lowest level since 2020 and the spread between interest rates set by the Bank of Canada and the Federal Reserve expected to be around 77 basis points in the year ahead.
“If you look back over history, interest rates in Canada and the U.S. can differ,” Macklem said. “There are limits to how big that difference can be. But we’re not close to those limits and those limits are not factoring into our current policy decisions.”
— With assistance from Jay Zhao-Murray.