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“A rate cut would help boost growth, but most of the impact would come by weakening the Canadian dollar further and thereby helping exporters,” said Shenfeld, one of the economists who will provide economic forecasts to Morneau on Oct. 13 in Toronto.

“There really isn’t that much to be positive about for the Canadian economy,” said Paul Ashworth, chief North America economist at Capital Economics. “Our view for some time has been that the bank would be forced to cut interest rates.”

Canada’s annual inflation rate fell to 1.1 per cent in August, Statistics Canada said Friday, which was the biggest drop since October last year, and followed a 1.3-per-cent year-over-year gain in July. Stripping out the most volatile consumer items, the core pace of inflation eased last month to 1.8 per cent from 2.1 per cent in August. That was the lowest core rate since July 2014.

Both readings were below the central bank’s two-per-cent inflation target.

Retail sales, also released Friday by the federal data agency, declined by 0.1 per cent in July from the previous month — led by a drop in gasoline prices — while forecasters had anticipated a 0.1-per-cent increase.

“That’s a slow motion economy,” said Douglas Porter, chief economist at BMO Capital Markets, who will also provide input to the finance minister’s Fall Economic Update, expected in November.

“We’ve got overall inflation now of one per cent. And we know that in the past year growth has averaged about one per cent. And, low and behold, long-term interest rates are at one per cent,” Porter said.