Bank of Canada hikes benchmark interest rate to 1%

The Bank of Canada hiked its benchmark interest rate by half a percentage point to one per cent on Wednesday in its latest move to rein in high inflation.

The bank's rate impacts Canadian businesses and consumers by influencing the rates they pay and receive on things like mortgages, GICs and savings accounts.

The bank slashed its rate to barely above zero in March of 2020 when the pandemic began.

While the move helped the economy to weather the unprecedented uncertainty of COVID-19, in recent months, inflation has come roaring back to its highest level in decades, prompting the central bank to start unwinding all that cheap credit.

"Inflation is too high," Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem said at a press conference announcing the news. "We need higher interest rates."

It's the second time in as many months that the bank has ratcheted its rate higher, and as such Wednesday's move is both the bank's first back-to-back rate hike since 2017, as well as its biggest single hike since the year 2000.

Economists were expecting the move, and with inflation flirting with six per cent, they expect more to come, at least until the central bank's rate gets up to two per cent — and possibly beyond.

The rate hike isn't the only thing the bank is doing to remove stimulus from the economy,

Previously in the pandemic, the bank began a program to buy up bonds as a way to keep money flowing and borrowing costs low. Known as "quantitative easing," the bank has been signalling for a while that the bond-buying program may be coming to an end, and on Wednesday the bank announced it is now moving in the opposite direction, getting rid of all those bonds on its books as they expire.

"Maturing Government of Canada bonds on the bank's balance sheet will no longer be replaced and, as a result, the size of the balance sheet will decline over time," the bank said.

That will add to the cost of borrowing, since the the central bank being removed as a guaranteed buyer of all those bonds will force those who issue them to have to pay a higher rate to borrow money. 

Those rates were headed higher even before the bank's decision. The yield on a five-year bond topped 2.7 per cent this week, the highest rate since 2013. Barely a month ago, it was less than 1.5 per cent, and at one point earlier in the pandemic, it bottomed out at below 0.5 per cent.

The bank's decision to implement a "quantitative tightening" program will push those yields up even further, making fixed-rate mortgages more expensive. 

Variable-rate loans, meanwhile, are pegged to the bank's rate, so they too will be headed higher likely before the end of the day.