BoC Hawkometer — Bank of Canada Speech Sentiment Tracker
Where the Governing Council of the Bank of Canada sits on the hawkish-dovish spectrum
Governing Council composition
The Bank of Canada makes monetary policy by consensus at the Governing Council, comprising the Governor, the Senior Deputy Governor and the Deputy Governors. There is no published vote. That makes the Hawkometer particularly useful for the BoC: it is one of the cleanest available reads on the distribution of views inside a committee that does not publish one.
The current Council tracked by the index is Governor Tiff Macklem, Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn Rogers, and Deputy Governors Sharon Kozicki and Toni Gravelle.
Beginner read: The BoC does not publish individual votes, so speeches help show how the Governing Council is thinking. A negative score means the Council sounds more open to cuts; a positive score means it sounds more focused on inflation risks.
Expert read: The BoC signal is compressed by consensus communication. Small score changes can be meaningful because the Council reveals less individual dispersion than the Fed, BoE or RBI.
Where the Council sits right now
How to read the chart: The line shows whether recent BoC language is moving toward inflation caution or growth caution. Because the Council speaks with one voice, even a modest shift can be worth noting.
How to read the chart: Watch the 30-day shift more than the absolute level. In a consensus system, the first sign of policy drift may be a change in phrasing around excess supply, wage pressure or shelter inflation rather than visible disagreement between speakers.
Speaker-by-speaker scores
Speaker guide: BoC speakers usually stay close together. If one speaker starts moving away from the group, it can be an early clue that the Council is debating a change in policy direction.
Speaker guide: The scatter is a low-dispersion consensus map. Treat widening between Macklem, Rogers and the Deputy Governors as more informative than the same numerical spread at committees where open dissent is normal.
The BoC scatter is the narrowest of the major central banks tracked here. That is a feature of the consensus model, not a bug in the index: the Council aligns publicly even when it disagrees privately, so the visible range compresses. Small movements still matter — a 0.5-point divergence among BoC speakers is often as informative as a 1.5-point divergence at the Fed.
Recent speeches and current shifts
| Date | Speaker | Title | Type | Score |
|---|
The BoC frequently publishes a Summary of Deliberations several weeks after each decision, which often contains language not in the original statement. When that document drops, the index can shift materially as the Council’s recent communication is scored against the new disclosure.
Upcoming Council appearances
Set-piece events that move the BoC Hawkometer:
- Post-meeting press conferences by the Governor and Senior Deputy Governor.
- Monetary Policy Report briefings.
- House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance appearances.
- Economic Progress Report speeches by Deputy Governors.
- CD Howe Institute and C.D. Howe Monetary Policy Council events.
How this connects to rate decisions
Pair the Hawkometer with the BoC policy rate probability tool and the broader global rate outlook. The BoC’s tight relationship with US conditions means a Canadian Hawkometer reading is often best interpreted alongside the Fed reading: a divergence between the two has historically been a leading indicator of CAD relative-value moves.
Bottom line: Use the BoC Hawkometer together with market probabilities and the Fed reading. Canada often reacts to both domestic inflation and the US backdrop.
Bottom line: The highest-value setup is a BoC-Fed communication divergence that is not yet reflected in CAD rates pricing. That divergence can indicate a relative policy path shift before it appears in published deliberations.
Limitations specific to the BoC
- Consensus dampens the signal. The narrow public range of views means the index has lower resolution at the BoC than at the more confrontational committees. We compensate by lowering the lean thresholds when reporting per-bank scores; readers comparing the BoC reading directly against the Fed or BoE should keep that in mind.
- Small speaker pool. With only four senior speakers regularly addressing monetary policy, a single appearance has a larger impact on the rolling average than at larger central banks.
For the full scoring methodology and phrase library, see the Hawkometer methodology page.
Committee speaker scores
| Speaker | Role | Voter | 90d score | 30d shift |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tiff Macklem | Governor | Voter | — | — |
| Carolyn Rogers | Senior Deputy Governor | Voter | — | — |
| Sharon Kozicki | Deputy Governor (retired 2026-07-15) | Non-voter | — | — |
| Toni Gravelle | Deputy Governor | Voter | — | — |
| Marc-André Gosselin | Deputy Governor (since 2026-05-25, domestic economic analysis) | Voter | — | — |
| Nicolas Vincent | Deputy Governor (full-time internal since 2026-08-03; international economic developments, G7/G20 Deputy) | Voter | — | — |
| Michelle Alexopoulos | Deputy Governor (external, part-time, since 2026-03-17) | Voter | — | — |
Recent speeches
No scored speeches for Bank of Canada yet. This list populates automatically as new communications are published.