OTTAWA—With its June 7 rate hike, the Bank of Canada pause lasted less than five months. In raising its overnight rate target by 25 basis points (0.25 percentage points) to 4.75 percent—the highest level since the spring of 2001—the BoC caught some market participants off-guard with the timing of the hike. 
In ending its pause, the BoC did not include in its June 7 statement any “forward guidance” language as it did on April 12, when it said it “remains prepared to raise the policy rate further.”
Regarding the central bank adopting the pause strategy and how it has played out, monetary policy expert Steve Ambler, a retired economics professor at Université du Québec à Montréal, told The Epoch Times that he thought the BoC was improving its communication in one respect—by making its forward guidance much more conditional on economic developments….