First, the purpose of our currency, the Canadian dollar, is to ensure that our monetary policy is independent from the policies of other countries. Yes, we take into account the situation in the United States. However, we make our decisions here in Canada for Canadians.
Why did we make this decision in January? At that point, our economic capacity had recovered. We no longer needed to tell everyone in our forward guidance that we would keep the interest rate at the effective lower bound. We decided to end that commitment. We sent a very clear message to Canadians that they could anticipate an increase in interest rates. This was a fairly major change in direction for the monetary policy. We wanted to make sure that this choice was well thought out, that we were transparent and that the information was shared with Canadians. Yesterday, we implemented the first step in that interest rate increase.