The Financial Post reports in its Saturday, Jan. 27, edition that the Bank of Canada is coming under mounting pressure to accelerate the timeline to end its quantitative tightening program, even as it stays quiet on its plans. A Bloomberg dispatch to the Post reports that BOC officials led by Governor Tiff Macklem held their key interest rate at 5 per cent last week, acknowledging that they are probably done hiking. However, policy-makers gave no substantive updates about their efforts to shrink the bank's balance sheet -- despite liquidity issues that prompted them to intervene in the repo market at the beginning of this month. The BOC bought huge quantities of bonds during the COVID pandemic, first to stabilize financial markets and then to suppress borrowing costs and help the economy. Its balance sheet grew to more than $570-billion. It has since declined to about $317-billion as those bonds mature. That process, called quantitative tightening, helps drain cash from the financial system, removing stimulus from the economy. Last year, the central bank said its expects to wind down its QT program by late 2024 or early 2025. However, there is some evidence it may need to move up that date.