The Bank of Canada held its key policy rate at 0.25 percent on Jan. 26, but is ready to start raising rates.   The central bank judges that “economic slack is now essentially absorbed” and its governing council decided to “end its extraordinary commitment to hold its policy rate at the effective lower bound. “The Governing Council expects interest rates will need to increase, with the timing and pace of those increases guided by the bank’s commitment to achieving the 2 percent inflation target,” according to the Bank of Canada’s interest rate announcement. The BoC delivered a new set of quarterly forecasts in its January Monetary Policy Report (MPR) that project slightly slower economic growth for the coming three years and a bit more persistent inflation as compared to its October projections. It indicated robust growth for the Canadian economy should resume in the second quarter. Despite the fact that …