Stephen Poloz

Early life

Stephen Poloz was born in Oshawa, Ontario. His family background is a mix of cultures, with his father having Ukrainian and Polish roots, and his mother coming from English and Scottish ancestry. Poloz is distantly related to George Stephen, the 1st Baron Mount Stephen, who was a 19th-century Canadian businessman and the first Canadian to be elevated to the Peerage of the United Kingdom.
As a young man, Stephen Poloz studied economics at Queen’s University, earning his Bachelor of Arts degree before going on to complete both his Master’s and Ph.D. in economics at Western University (then known as the University of Western Ontario). His doctoral research focused on how currency values move and change over time.

Career

Upon entering the workforce, Stephen Poloz joined the Bank of Canada in 1981. There, he steadily rose through the institution’s ranks over the course of 14 years, ultimately being promoted to Chief of the Bank’s Research Department in 1992 and spending two more years in that position.

After leaving the Bank of Canada in the mid-90s, Poloz joined BCA Research as the managing editor of The International Bank Credit Analyst, its flagship publication, where he spent four years analyzing global financial trends for investors and institutions.

In 1999, he began working at Export Development Canada (EDC), initially serving as Vice-President and Chief Economist. Over the next decade, he took on progressively larger responsibilities in the organization, and in 2008, he was promoted to Senior Vice-President, Financing, with responsibility for all of EDC’s lending programs. Around the same time, he enrolled in Columbia University’s senior executive program and earned certification as an International Trade Professional. In 2011, he was made President and Chief Executive Officer of EDC, a role he held until 2013, when he was tapped to become the ninth Governor of the Bank of Canada, immediately following in the footsteps of future Prime Minister of Canada Mark Carney.

Poloz served as Governor of the Bank of Canada for a seven-year term, wherein he oversaw monetary policy, as well as adjusted interest rates multiple times to respond to both economic downturns and recoveries. Notably, he guided the Bank’s response to the economic impact of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, lowering the key interest rate from 1.75 percent to 0.25 percent to help stabilize the economy. He chose not to seek a second term, concluding his Governorship in June 2020.

Following his tenure at the Bank of Canada, Stephen Poloz joined Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP as a special advisor. He also took on roles on multiple boards, including those of Enbridge, Western University, and Key (formerly known as Key Living), a Toronto-based real estate company. He is also currently chair of the advisory board of the Lawrence National Centre at the Ivey School of Business. In 2022, he published his first book, The Next Age of Uncertainty, and in 2024, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada.

In addition to his more public roles, Stephen Poloz has also made significant contributions to academia and international policy work and economic cooperation. He served as a visiting scholar with the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C., as well as Japan’s Economic Planning Agency in Tokyo. He has shared his expertise in economics as an instructor at Western University, his alma mater, as well as at Concordia University and Queen’s School of Business.

Net Worth

Information pertaining to Stephen Poloz’s net worth is not currently available to the public.