REGION A – NORTH / CENTRAL AMERICA

THE SINKING OF THE TITANIC

(April 14-15, 1912 – North Atlantic Ocean)

The Bank of Canada

(Ottawa, Canada)

ROTHSCHILD OWNED & CONTROLLED CENTRAL BANK

The Official Story

THE BANK OF CANADA
(Ottawa, Canada)

The Bank of Canada (BoC; French: Banque du Canada) is a Crown corporation and Canada’s central bank. Chartered in 1934 under the Bank of Canada Act, it is responsible for formulating Canada’s monetary policy, and for the promotion of a safe and sound financial system within Canada. The Bank of Canada is the sole issuing authority of Canadian banknotes, provides banking services and money management for the government, and loans money to Canadian financial institutions. The contract to produce the banknotes has been held by the Canadian Bank Note Company since 1935.

The Bank of Canada headquarters are located at the Bank of Canada Building, 234 Wellington Street in Ottawa, Ontario. The building also used to house the Bank of Canada Museum, which opened in December 1980 and temporarily closed in 2013. As of July 2017, the museum is now located at 30 Bank Street, Ottawa, Ontario, but is connected to the main buildings through the Bank of Canada’s underground meeting rooms.

Roles and responsibilities

The mandate of the Bank of Canada is defined in the Bank of Canada Act preamble and it states,

WHEREAS it is desirable to establish a central bank in Canada to regulate credit and currency in the best interests of the economic life of the nation, to control and protect the external value of the national monetary unit and to mitigate by its influence fluctuations in the general level of production, trade, prices and employment, so far as may be possible within the scope of monetary action, and generally to promote the economic and financial welfare of Canada.

The Bank of Canada’s responsibilities focus on the goals of low, stable and predictable inflation; a safe and secure currency; a stable and efficient financial system in Canada and internationally; and effective and efficient funds-management services for the Government of Canada, as well as on its own behalf and for other clients.

In practice, however, it has a more narrow and specific internal definition of that mandate: to keep the rate of inflation (as measured by the Consumer Price Index) between 1% and 3%. Since adoption of the 1% to 3% inflation target in 1991 and 2019, the average inflation rate was 1.79%. The most potent tool the Bank of Canada has to achieve this goal is its ability to set the interest rate for borrowed money. Because of the large amount of trade between Canada and the United States, specific adjustments to interest rates are often affected by those in the US at the time.

The Bank of Canada is the sole entity authorized to issue currency in the form of bank notes in Canada. The bank does not issue coins; they are issued by the Royal Canadian Mint.

Canada no longer requires banks to maintain fractional reserves with the Bank of Canada. Instead, banks are required to hold highly liquid assets such as treasury bills equal to 30 days of normal withdrawals (liquidity coverage), while leverage is primarily tied to adequate loss-absorbing capital, notably tier one (equity) capital.

Type of government institution

The Bank of Canada is structured as a Crown corporation rather than as a government department, with shares held in the name of the minister of finance on behalf of the government. While the Bank of Canada Act provides the minister of finance with the final authority on matters of monetary policy through the power to issue a directive no such directive has ever been issued. The bank’s earnings go into the federal treasury. The governor and senior deputy governor are appointed by the bank’s board of directors. The deputy minister of finance sits on the board of directors but does not have a vote. The bank submits its spending to the board of directors, while departmental spending is overseen by the Treasury Board with their spending estimates submitted to Parliament. Its employees are regulated by the bank and not the federal public service agencies.

Source: Wikipedia