Tiff Macklem

Tiff Macklem became Governor of the Bank of Canada (BOC) in June 2020, having previously served as Senior Deputy Governor and Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. He took the helm as Canada faced the deepest economic contraction since the Great Depression due to COVID-19, immediately overseeing an unprecedented monetary stimulus program including quantitative easing — a first for the BOC. Macklem's defining challenge has been Canada's acute housing affordability crisis. Canadian household debt-to-income ratios are among the highest in the developed world, making the economy extraordinarily sensitive to interest rate changes. When inflation surged past 8% in 2022, Macklem raised the overnight rate from 0.25% to 5.0% in one of the most aggressive tightening cycles in BOC history, knowing that each hike would amplify mortgage stress for millions of households with variable-rate and short-term fixed mortgages. In June 2024, the BOC became the first G7 central bank to begin cutting rates, signaling that Macklem judged the inflation fight sufficiently advanced to shift focus toward economic growth and housing market stability. His decisions directly set the trajectory for Canadian government bond yields, the CAD exchange rate, mortgage pricing across Canada, and the broader commodity-linked EM risk appetite given Canada's role as a major oil and resource exporter.