Canadian Dollar (CAD) Data Coverage: Indicators, Sources and Release Times

Quick answer

FXMacroData serves 31 Canadian dollar series from the production catalogue, published by the Bank of Canada and Statistics Canada, with the trade-weighted index from the Bank for International Settlements. They cover the overnight rate and CORRA, the Government of Canada yield curve, CPI with the Bank's preferred core measures, monthly GDP, the Labour Force Survey, trade, retail, housing, household credit, the Business Outlook Survey and the weekly Bank of Canada commodity price index.

That set maps directly onto what moves USD/CAD: Bank of Canada decisions, CPI-trim and CPI-median, jobs Friday and oil-driven terms of trade. Each release is stored with its exact announcement timestamp.

Below is what is in the CAD catalogue, who publishes each series, when it is released in Toronto time and UTC, and how traders use the data in USD/CAD and the CAD crosses.

Who publishes Canadian dollar data

Bank of Canada. The Bank sets the target for the overnight rate at eight fixed announcement dates a year and publishes CORRA, benchmark bond yields, the CPI-trim and CPI-median core inflation measures, the quarterly Business Outlook Survey and the Bank of Canada commodity price index (BCPI). FXMacroData reads these from the Bank's Valet API and its rate-announcement schedule.

Statistics Canada. StatCan publishes the consumer price index, monthly GDP by industry, the Labour Force Survey, average weekly earnings, merchandise trade, the current account, retail trade, building permits, industrial product prices and household credit from the national balance sheet accounts. FXMacroData reads the official StatCan data tables.

Bank for International Settlements. The CAD trade-weighted index is the BIS nominal effective exchange rate (broad basket, 2020=100), not the Bank of Canada's CEER index.

Every observation carries an announcement_datetime, and new releases typically reach the API within seconds of official publication (see release speed).

CAD indicators covered

All of these appear in the production catalogue at /v1/data_catalogue/cad. The slug in brackets is the indicator value used in API calls.

Policy and rates

• Bank of Canada overnight rate target (policy_rate): the policy rate, with one row per scheduled announcement so that holds remain visible. The gap between this rate and the Fed funds target is the starting point for any USD/CAD view.
• CORRA (risk_free_rate): the Canadian Overnight Repo Rate Average, the daily risk-free benchmark that replaced CDOR-based pricing.
• Government of Canada bond yields (2-year, 3-year, 5-year, 7-year, 10-year, long-term): daily benchmark yields from the Bank of Canada. The 2-year is the most rate-sensitive point. The long-term slug is the Bank's long benchmark, whose bond has roughly 30 years to maturity but is not pinned to exactly 30.
• Real Return Bond yield (inflation_linked_bond): the daily real yield on Government of Canada Real Return Bonds. The government stopped issuing new RRBs in 2022, so liquidity in this market is thinner than before.

Inflation

• CPI inflation (inflation): headline year-on-year CPI from Statistics Canada, with history back to 1915.
• Core inflation (CPI-trim, CPI-trim (Bank of Canada series), CPI-median): the Bank of Canada's preferred core measures, released with the CPI. core_inflation and core_inflation_trim both serve CPI-trim; markets often trade the average of trim and median.
• Industrial Product Price Index (ppi): monthly year-on-year change in prices received by Canadian manufacturers, sensitive to energy and lumber prices.

Growth and activity

• GDP (monthly) (gdp): seasonally adjusted GDP by industry, monthly, in CAD billion. Canada is one of the few G10 economies with an official monthly GDP series, published about two months after the reference month.
• Retail sales (retail_sales): monthly retail trade in CAD million.
• Building permits (building_permits): the monthly value of permits, a forward indicator for residential construction.
• Household credit (household_credit): quarterly household credit market debt from the national balance sheet accounts, the series behind Canada's household leverage debate.
• Business Outlook Survey (business_confidence): the Bank of Canada's quarterly survey indicator, normalised to a 0 to 100 scale. It feeds directly into the Bank's own read of the economy.

Labour market

• Unemployment rate (unemployment): from the monthly Labour Force Survey.
• Employment (employment): total employed persons; the month-on-month change is the headline jobs number.
• Employment detail (full-time, part-time, participation rate): the quality of the jobs change, which often decides whether USD/CAD keeps its first move.
• Average weekly earnings (wages): year-on-year growth in earnings from the payroll survey, a measure of wage pressure.

External and commodities

• Merchandise trade balance (trade_balance): monthly, in CAD million. Energy exports to the United States dominate the swings.
• Current account balance (current_account_balance): quarterly, in CAD million.
• Bank of Canada commodity price index (total, energy, excluding energy): weekly, in US dollar terms, each value averaging the five business days ending on the Wednesday it is dated. It is the official way to track the oil and metals exposure behind CAD.
• Trade-weighted index (BIS NEER) (trade_weighted_index): monthly nominal effective exchange rate.

CAD release timing

Statistics Canada releases at 08:30 Eastern time, the same minute as most US data, and the Bank of Canada announces at 09:45. Toronto (America/Toronto) observes daylight saving from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November, so the UTC column shows daylight time (EDT, UTC-4) first and standard time (EST, UTC-5) second.

When Canadian and US releases share the 08:30 slot, USD/CAD reacts to the difference between the two surprises, so check the release calendar for days when jobs or CPI land together. Bank of Canada statements are collected in the CAD press release feed.

Worked example: the August 2026 CPI

Statistics Canada published the August 2026 CPI on Monday 14 September 2026 at 08:30 Eastern time. This request returns it:

curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY" "https://api.fxmacrodata.com/v1/announcements/cad/inflation?start_date=2026-09-01"

The newest row in the response (abridged to the core fields):

{
  "date": "2026-08-31",
  "val": 3.0,
  "announcement_datetime": 1789389000,
  "previous_value": 3.0,
  "previous_date": "2026-07-31"
}

date is the reference month, val is headline inflation of 3.0 percent year on year, unchanged from July, and announcement_datetime 1789389000 is 12:30:00 UTC, which is 08:30 EDT. The same call on core_inflation_trim and core_inflation_median returns the two core measures stamped with the same release time, so you can see in one place whether an unchanged headline hid a shift in underlying inflation.

How traders use CAD data

Core inflation against the 2 percent target

The Bank of Canada targets 2 percent CPI inflation within a 1 to 3 percent range and leans on CPI-trim and CPI-median. Track both against the overnight rate: core measures stuck near the top of the range make cuts harder, regardless of what headline CPI does.

Policy and 2-year spreads

Subtract the US 2-year yield from the Government of Canada 2-year to follow the rate differential that tends to lead USD/CAD. FXMacroData returns US and Canadian yields in the same format, so the spread is a simple join on date.

Oil and terms of trade

The BCPI energy sub-index and the merchandise trade balance show how much oil prices are flowing into Canadian income. A rising energy index with a widening trade surplus has historically supported CAD; the ex-energy index helps separate oil from metals and agriculture.

Jobs Friday

The Labour Force Survey often lands on the same morning as US payrolls. Read the unemployment rate, the employment change and the full-time share together, then compare with the US surprise: USD/CAD trades the relative result.

Household leverage and the rate path

Quarterly household credit and monthly building permits show how sensitive Canadian households are to rate changes. High leverage tends to make the Bank more cautious about tightening, which matters for how far CAD can rally on strong data.

Related pages

• Bank of Canada: key indicators and API data guide
• Bank of Canada Business Outlook Survey and CAD
• USD/CAD dashboard
• Release calendar
• FXMacroData data coverage across all 22 currencies