Although the Bank of Canada (BoC) was among the first of the developed world’s central banks to adopt a hawkish stance toward monetary policy, Governor Stephen Poloz, who just presided over his first decision regarding interest rates since taking the helm in June, has indicated that record-low interest rates will remain in place for some time.

In mid-2010, the BoC was the first of the G-7 nations to raise rates, though the bank’s 1 percent target for the overnight rate has been in place now for nearly three years. Last year, former Governor Mark Carney cut through central bank watchers’ complacency when he said that the bank’s next move on interest rates would be to the upside, in part to curtail excessive consumer borrowing.

But Carney’s upward rate bias proved to be theoretical, as Canada’s sluggish economy precluded any further monetary tightening. Since then, Carney was lured away to head the Bank of England, and now Poloz, who previously led the government’s export credit agency Economic Development Canada, controls the reins for monetary policy.

And like his central bank counterpart in the US, Poloz is attempting to provide markets with greater clarity in the bank’s guidance for interest rate policy. Though not as specific as Bernanke’s thresholds for the unemployment rate, the Wall Street Journal noted that the BoC’s policy statement included three key areas to monitor: Canada’s potential growth rate, a metric that’s published just once per year, inflation, and household debt levels.

The good news is that the BoC has boosted its expectation for full-year gross domestic product (GDP) growth to 1.8 percent from 1.5 percent. And the bank forecasts that the economy will grow 2.7 percent each year in 2014 and 2015.

In the near term, however, historic flooding in the energy-rich province of Alberta along with a province-wide strike by construction workers in Quebec likely dampened second-quarter growth. The bank says these one-time events may have shaved as much as 1.3 percentage points off quarterly GDP.

Meanwhile, Inflation isn’t expected to rise to the 2 percent midpoint of the bank’s medium-term target range of 1 percent to 3 percent until mid-2015. Since maintaining control over inflation is one of the bank’s core mandates, that offers some sense of a timeline as to when the bank might finally raise rates again. Economists at most institutions predict the first rate hike will occur during the third or fourth quarter of 2014.

The total consumer price index (CPI), which is the BoC’s primary metric for monitoring inflation, grew just 0.7 percent year over year in May. Inflation hasn’t risen at the key rate of 2 percent since April 2012.

The bank also monitors core CPI, which excludes prices for eight volatile food and energy components. Core CPI recently rose at a rate of 1.1 percent year over year, and last rose at a rate of 2 percent in June 2012.

Despite the apparent softening of the BoC’s hawkish stance, its policy statement still included a tepidly worded sentence noting that it intends to increase short-term rates, though that action is conditional on improvement in the aforementioned areas.

Thus far, the bank’s policymaking under Poloz remains largely consistent with Carney’s approach. And that should reassure investors who were surprised when the government selected him instead of Carney’s steady second-in-command Tiff Macklem.