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Wilkins’s emphasis on the still-low level of borrowing costs was a reminder that the public needn’t panic at the sight of marginally higher interest rates, and a gentle warning that no one should expect interest rates to stay at this level.

The economy is growing a little faster than the Bank of Canada predicted a few months ago, and “vulnerabilities” from elevated levels of household debt are “edging lower,” it said. Policy makers reiterated that interest rates must rise, and for the first time offered a more definitive notion of where it wants to go.

“Governing Council agrees that the policy interest rate will need to rise to a neutral stance to achieve the inflation target,” the bank said in a statement explaining the latest policy decision.

Poloz, who took over as the governor of Canada’s central bank in 2014, has talked wistfully about returning interest rates to a level that economists associate with normal, a place where the cost of money is neither stimulating expansion nor curbing growth. The central bank estimates that “neutral” interest rate — which Poloz has characterized as “home” — is something between 2.5 per cent and 3.5 per cent.

There will be a debate on Bay Street and Wall Street about how fast the Bank of Canada wants to close the gap between the neutral rate and the current setting. Analysts tended to call the central bank’s latest communication “hawkish,” a widely used term that implies the central bank is more apt to raise interest rates than to cut them or leave them unchanged. The value of the dollar jumped in the minutes following the release of the policy statement, as traders noticed that “gradual” had been dropped from the text. Policy makers had used that modifier in three consecutive policy statements to make sure the public knew that the economy was facing a lot of headwinds.