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The Bank of Canada Is Sitting on Its Hands Again. Gas Is the Reason, and Adopted Abroad?Getting Your Kid a Passport is Now Less Painful.
News for residents of the “11th province”: Canadians abroad.
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The Bank of Canada Is Sitting on Its Hands Again. Gas Is the Reason.
The Bank of Canada held its overnight rate at 2.25 percent on Wednesday - the fourth straight time it has decided to do nothing. Governor Tiff Macklem says the Middle East oil shock is the reason to remain cautious. Gas prices climbed 21 percent in the month of March, (that’s the biggest one-month jump on record), in a move that’s pushing annual inflation up to 2.4 percent from 1.8 percent.
The Bank says it will "look through" the energy spike for now, treating it as a temporary price shock instead of a sign that the entire economy is heating up. The logic makes sense in theory because Canada is also an oil exporter. Because of that, it has more cushion than Britain or the EU, where the BoC's counterparts are facing the same inflation problem with none of the revenue upside.
For Canadians tracking their finances back home - whether that's a mortgage renewing, an RRSP, or just what their CAD will get them when they wire money - the indication is that rates are going nowhere fast. The Bank has held at 2.25 percent since January, and with oil still elevated and trade uncertainty lingering, another hold is the path of least resistance.
Read more: The Globe and Mail / Financial Post
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Adopted Abroad? Getting Your Kid a Passport is Now Less Painful.
The rules for internationally adopted children have been updated this week and adopted persons living abroad can now apply directly for a full-validity passport using their electronic citizenship certificate. This allows them to skip the old two-step process that required a limited-validity passport first.
The change was published by IRCC on April 24 and came into effect immediately. Before this, families who got an e-certificate abroad were still required to apply for a limited-validity passport, travel to Canada to establish residency, and only then were they allowed to apply for a “real” passport. It was a bureaucratic hoop that created little more than headaches for adoptive families navigating an emotionally exhausting process.
Now, once an adopted child has a citizenship e-certificate in hand - whether they are under 16 (in which case the adoptive parent fills out the form) or 16 and older (when the child will apply themselves) - the family can go straight to a full five-year passport. Paper certificate holders still need the old process, but anyone who got an e-certificate can ask for a switch to digital before their paper version is issued.
Read more: CIC News