By Julian Bel­trame, The Cana­dian Press

OTTAWA — Any thoughts Bank of Canada gov­er­nor Mark Car­ney might have had about cut­ting inter­est rates fur­ther today likely flew out the win­dow after a recent spate of rel­a­tively good eco­nomic news.

The Bank of Canada will announce its pol­icy set­ting — which influ­ences short term inter­est rates — at 9 a.m., and the opin­ion appears vir­tu­ally unan­i­mous there will be no change from the cur­rent one per cent perch.

That should keep in force a credit land­scape that has seen bor­row­ing rates across the spec­trum of terms and con­di­tions among the most gen­er­ous in memory.

In fact, last week the Bank of Mon­treal offered the first 2.99 per cent five-year, fixed mort­gage rate in mod­ern Cana­dian his­tory, forc­ing other banks to fol­low suit with sim­i­lar actions.

In essence, the mar­ket is beat­ing the cen­tral bank to the punch with credit eas­ing, said Derek Holt, vice-president of eco­nom­ics with Scotiabank.

But there are other rea­sons ana­lysts — with few excep­tions — believe Car­ney will be loathe to move off one per cent, where he’s been since Sep­tem­ber 2010.

That’s because as weak as con­di­tions are, with Europe still at risk of plung­ing the world into another reces­sion, the eco­nomic indi­ca­tors have been stronger than Car­ney thought they would be three months ago.

Then, the bank gov­er­nor pro­jected growth in the third quar­ter of 2011 would come in at a weak two per cent and the fourth at a barely vis­i­ble 0.8 per cent. The third quar­ter is already in the books at 3.5 per cent and the fourth looks closer to two per cent, however.

As well, the resilience of oil prices to the global slow­down likely means infla­tion in 2012 will be a lit­tle stronger than the bank had been count­ing on.

“The com­bi­na­tion of per­haps upward revi­sions to growth and infla­tion fore­casts … might be the thing that totally takes rate cuts off the table,” said Holt.

There are some who still believe Carney’s next move will be to trim inter­est rates, includ­ing Car­leton Uni­ver­sity econ­o­mist Nicholas Rowe, a mem­ber of the C.D. Howe Institute’s mon­e­tary pol­icy panel, and David Madani of Cap­i­tal Economics.

Madani expects Car­ney will take the pol­icy rate to 0.5 per cent by the end of the year. He has a darker than most view of the econ­omy — with growth a mere 1.5 per cent this year, and the unem­ploy­ment rate ris­ing half-a-point to eight per cent by year’s end.

“Although (the bank) … will no doubt high­light that U.S. eco­nomic activ­ity has improved some­what, even they would admit that a sus­tained recov­ery is far from assured, par­tic­u­larly con­sid­er­ing Europe’s reces­sion and the height­ened risk of another global bank­ing cri­sis,” Madani wrote in a note to clients.

But Madani also said Car­ney is likely to wait out at least one more pol­icy date before mak­ing his move.

The main news com­ing out of Tuesday’s announce­ment, and Wednesday’s mon­e­tary pol­icy review — the bank’s new fore­cast for the global and Cana­dian economies — is whether Car­ney sees the stronger-than-expected sec­ond half of 2011 as a pre­cur­sor for 2012, or sim­ply a blip that merely delayed the onset of weaker growth.

In the pre­vi­ous pol­icy review, the cen­tral bank had pre­dicted growth would come in at 2.1 per cent in 2011, 1.9 per cent in 2012, and 2.9 per cent in 2013.

With 2011 already in the books — although all the data points are not yet known — the expec­ta­tion is that growth was more likely in the mod­er­ate 2.4 per cent range. But that may not change Carney’s view that 2012 will be even weaker, with con­sid­er­able down­side if Europe’s debt issues metastasize.

In past pol­icy announce­ments, Car­ney has made it clear he views the cur­rent one-per-cent set­ting to be suf­fi­ciently accom­moda­tive for the cur­rent, slow-growth econ­omy. Easy credit con­di­tions stim­u­late spend­ing and expan­sion in the economy.

Holt said it would likely take a Euro­pean implo­sion for Car­ney to cut rates further.