bank-of-canada-mcp

bank-of-canada-mcp

An MCP server that gives Claude and other LLMs live access to Canadian economic data via the Bank of Canada's free Valet API — ~16,000 time series covering exchange rates, the policy interest rate, CPI, bond yields, commodity prices, and more.

FRED, the World Bank, and the IMF all have MCP servers. Canada didn't — now it does.

No API key required.

Quick start

Claude Code

claude mcp add bank-of-canada -- npx -y bank-of-canada-mcp

Claude Desktop — add to claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "bank-of-canada": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "bank-of-canada-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

The same npx invocation works in Cursor, Windsurf, and any other MCP client.

Tools

Tool	What it does
search_series	Keyword search across the full series catalogue — find the series name for anything ("overnight rate target", "CPI", "5-year bond")
get_observations	Time-series data for up to 5 series, by date range or N most recent
latest_fx_rates	Today's official daily exchange rates vs CAD
convert_currency	Convert between any two supported currencies using today's rates

Example prompts

• "What's the Bank of Canada's current policy rate, and how has it moved this year?"
• "Plot USD/CAD for the last 90 days."
• "Convert 2,500 EUR to CAD at today's official rate."
• "How does core CPI compare to headline CPI over the past two years?"

Development

npm install
npm test        # offline unit tests (vitest)
npm run build   # tsc → dist/

Architecture: src/valet.ts is a plain API client with pure, unit-tested logic (search, conversion math); src/index.ts is the MCP wiring. Errors from the Valet API (e.g. an unknown series name) are returned as MCP tool errors with the API's own message, so the model can self-correct by re-searching.

Notes

• Rates are the Bank of Canada's indicative daily averages, published once per business day — not transactional quotes.
• Data is © Bank of Canada, used under their terms. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Bank of Canada.

Roadmap

• Statistics Canada Web Data Service tools
• Group browsing (lists/groups)
• Streamable HTTP transport for remote deployment

License

MIT