BoC's Poloz: Economy continues to have significant excess capacity

Key highlights from Governor Poloz's opening statement before the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce:

• Energy-related activity has stopped declining and is transitioning to a new level that is commensurate with the current level of oil prices
• We have revised up our outlook for average annual growth in 2017 to a bit over 2 1/2 per cent
• Some of the strength is coming from factors that are unlikely to continue at the same pace
• While job growth has certainly been firm, both wages and unit labour costs have grown only slowly
• The data suggest that material slack remains in the Canadian labour market
• Canadian companies are dealing with heightened levels of uncertainty related to US tax and trade policies
• With all of this uncertainty, we cannot reliably model the impact of changes to US trade policy