The Bank of Canada announced today the names of three external experts who will provide an independent assessment of its review of exceptional policy actions taken during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As announced in June, the Bank is undertaking an in-depth internal review of its exceptional actions, including market-functioning programs, quantitative easing and extraordinary forward guidance.

The Bank’s Governing Council engaged three external experts to provide an independent assessment of this review:

• Pablo Hernández de Cos, former Governor of the Bank of Spain, former chair of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and chair of the Advisory Technical Committee of the European Systemic Risk Board.
• Kristin J. Forbes, Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Professor of Management and Global Economics at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee.
• Trevor Tombe, Professor at the University of Calgary’s Department of Economics and the Director of Fiscal and Economic Policy at The School of Public Policy.

“Successful organizations are learning organizations. It is critically important to learn from our experience through the pandemic and its immediate aftermath to sharpen our response to the next crisis,” said Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem. “The external expert assessment will bring together three renowned international and Canadian academics and policymakers with extensive experience in central banking and economic and financial policy research.  The diverse perspectives of these experts will help us draw the right lessons from this unprecedented crisis. This is critical to ensuring the Bank delivers the best policy for Canadians, whatever lies ahead.”

The Bank’s pandemic review will look at the context and the timeline of the Bank’s policy actions, assess their effectiveness, and identify lessons learned. It will also identify key questions to guide future discussions should the need for exceptional policy measures arise again in the future. The external expert assessment will evaluate whether the Bank’s review is comprehensive and balanced, and whether it has identified the most relevant lessons to inform future policy. Both the Bank’s internal review and the external assessment will be published near the end of this year.