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The Bank of Canada raised interest rates on July 12, and is expected to hike at least once more this year. As Bloomberg reported last week, some officials within the Trudeau government are nervous the tightening began too soon, as Canadians carry ample debt. A Morneau spokesman said Friday the minister has “full confidence” in the central bank.

Political concern may nonetheless be warranted. Trudeau’s Liberal Party under a former leader swept to power in 1993 and won three subsequent elections — all of them while interest rates were stable or falling and the economy was relatively strong. “The working assumption of every central bank is more governments would favor more growth and looser policy,” said Doug Porter, chief economist at Bank of Montreal.

Rates are now projected to rise heading into Canada’s 2019 election, while growth is forecast to fall. The last time a Liberal government entered an election in the middle of a monetary policy tightening cycle was in 2006; that year, the Conservatives defeated them.

Can It Last?

Output growth will peak this year at 2.6 percent and slow in each of the next two years to 1.9 percent in 2019, according to a Bloomberg consensus survey. While still respectable — it’d be behind only the U.S. in the G-7 — it’s nowhere near the level of growth being seen today. Sustaining the current pace would be a tall order.

“To me, that’s virtually impossible,” said Jean-Francois Perrault, chief economist at Bank of Nova Scotia in Toronto and a former finance department official. It would be “fantastical” to have growth anything close to 3 percent in 2019, he said. “You’re in a world when growth is at least twice potential. That can’t be sustained.”