Easy money eventually flows through the economy, it’s just that sometimes you have to wait.

For our neighbor to the north, the Bank of Canada’s (BoC) surprise rate cut in late January, which brought short-term rates to their lowest level since the Global Financial Crisis, seems to have finally spurred some much-needed investment among the country’s businesses.

According to a recent report from the Royal Bank of Canada’s (RBC) economics team, Canada’s business financing rose 9.1% year over year in March, its fastest pace since October 1998.

If the sudden increase in borrowing isn’t just a one-month blip, then that would flip the BoC’s script.

Longtime readers will recall that the central bank has been forecasting (or perhaps merely hoping?) that a lower exchange rate would help facilitate a rise in export activity for Canada’s beleaguered manufacturing sector, which in turn would lead to more business investment, new hiring, and more spending–lather, rinse, repeat.

But while manufacturing has shown some progress, particularly on the export front, as the numbers for February gross domestic product (GDP) showed, growth for the overall sector is still relatively sluggish, up just 2.3% from a year ago.

Meanwhile, manufacturers’ payrolls were actually 1.8% lower in March than they were a year ago, hardly the sign of a sector renaissance.

And, of course, the crash in commodities prices has roiled Canada’s oil and gas sector, which has gone from boom to bust.

For now, that means other sectors must pick up the slack. The RBC didn’t break down its numbers by industry, and Bloomberg’s monitor of new debt issuance only goes back one month and would only cover the biggest companies anyway. So there’s not much in the way of specific intel from these data on which sectors are investing in future growth.

Nevertheless, the numbers involved are certainly significant, thus giving investors some hope that, as BoC Governor Stephen Poloz put it, most of the pain from the oil shock was front-loaded toward the beginning of the year.

Now, let’s get into some of the numbers.

Short-term financing, which includes bank loans, jumped 12.2% from a year ago.

And the month-over-month increase, at 25.6%, underscores just how stagnant the country’s economy was in February, when GDP experienced essentially no growth from the prior month.

Long-term financing, which accounts for more than two-thirds of total business borrowing, was up 7.9%. Bonds and debentures account for more than 40% of this category, and debt issuance compared to the prior month was brisk, up 35.6%.

As noted earlier, it’s too soon to tell whether this activity will prove more than fleeting.

After all, a recent survey conducted by the BoC paints a more nuanced picture.

The central bank’s spring Business Outlook Survey shows that while firms acknowledged that credit conditions had eased over the most recent three-month period, their investment intentions for the coming year remained about the same as last year.

However, the BoC does note that weakness on the business-spending front was concentrated in those industries affected by fallout from crude’s collapse. Unfortunately, it doesn’t offer a further breakdown of its survey data to show which other industries expect to increase their investment in the year ahead.

For a rough gauge of investment intentions, we must necessarily turn to Statistics Canada’s notoriously volatile monthly Labor Force Survey.

The March employment report is due to come out this Friday, so we’ll have to content ourselves with February data.

In the goods-producing sector, construction jobs rose 1.2% year over year, thanks to the country’s ongoing housing boom. In fact, construction was the only industry in the goods-producing sector that didn’t lose jobs over the past year.

In the service sector, the top two job creators were educational services (up 5.7% year over year) and healthcare (up 3.3%).

As for the broader economy, GDP growth is forecast to slow to 1.0% during the first quarter (we’re still waiting on first-quarter numbers) before a moderate reacceleration through year-end.