Top Bank of Canada officials speak after rate decision

TORONTO (Reuters) - Below are some key quotes from a news conference by Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem and Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn Rogers on Wednesday after the central bank raised key interest rate by 25 basis points to a 15-year high of 4.5%.

MACKLEM ON NEED FOR PERIOD OF NO GROWTH

"We do need this period though of essentially no growth to allow supply to catch up. We do need to rebalance. Demand is running ahead of supply. We need to give supply a chance to catch up. That's a big part of reducing the inflationary pressures and that's a big part of restoring price stability. But I don't want to pretend that it's painless, it's not painless."

MACKLEM ON POSSIBILITY OF MILD RECESSION

"I guess the way I would put it as with a projection of roughly zero growth for two to three quarters. What that means is it's just as likely that we'll have two or three quarters of slightly negative growth, slightly positive growth. So yes, it could be a mild recession. It's not a major contraction.

MACKLEM ON BOC'S RECENT LOSSES

"I can tell you that the Minister of Finance has recently communicated to me that the government intends to introduce legislative amendments that will allow the bank to retain earnings to offset losses."

"So what this means is it will allow on a temporary basis the Bank of Canada to retain earnings rather than remitting them to the government, for the purpose of recovering losses. Once positive equity is restored we would resume our normal remittances to the Government of Canada."

MACKLEM ON WHAT WOULD BE NEEDED TO HIKE FURTHER

"If economic developments and in particular if inflation comes down in line with our forecast that will confirm that we have likely done enough. If on the other hand we start to see an accumulation of evidence that inflation is not coming down in line with our forecasts we are prepared to raise interest rates further."

"This isn't going to key off one piece of data or one release, we are looking for an accumulation of evidence."

MACKLEM ON THE POSSIBILITY OF RATE CUTS

"It is really far too early to be talking about cuts. The pause really is designed to give us time to assess if we have raised interest rates enough to get inflation all the way back to target."

(Reporting by Fergal Smith, Nia Williams, Divya Rajagopal; Compiled by Denny Thomas)