The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem softened his hawkish position on possible rate hikes on Friday. The Globe's Mark Rendell writes that in a press conference after a speech in Toronto, Mr. Macklem said members of the bank's governing council "did agree that the likelihood that monetary policy was sufficiently restrictive to achieve the inflation target had increased." That is the clearest a Bank of Canada official has been that interest rates may have peaked. On Wednesday, the U.S. Federal Reserve held interest rates steady for the third consecutive decision, but suggested that further interest-rate increases are essentially off the table and rate cuts are coming in the new year. This message was more dovish than expected, prompting a surge in stock and bond prices, and increased bets on rate cuts from the Fed in the first half of the year. The bank will publish new forecasts in January. "We continue to look for rate cuts in July, which fits with the Bank's insistence that it is too early to think about rate cuts," TD Bank's Andrew Kelvin said in a note. "It may only take a month or two of soft data for the BoC to actually start considering rate cuts."