Harper to meet top bankers to discuss economic slump

CBC
November 6, 2008

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will meet with bank and insurance executives in Toronto on Thursday to discuss the financial downturn that has rocked economies around the world.

With a meeting of the leaders of the Group of 20 industrialized and developing countries in a week, Harper began his Thursday at the C.D. Howe Institute, an economic think-tank.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

He is later due to meet with some of the country’s top banking and insurance executives.

He is expected to seek input from these executives on which practices have worked for the Canadian banking industry, CBC’s Marivel Taruc said on Thursday.

At the meeting, Harper will likely speak about strengthening regulation in the banking industry, Nancy Hughes Anthony, CEO of the Canadian Bankers Association, told CBC News.

“Let’s have some kind of single, common security regulator in this country so we can make sure that we have a good handle on the security side of the business,” said Anthony.

“I’m sure that’s going to come up in the conversation today.”

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

The World Economic Forum said last month that Canada’s banking system was the soundest in the world. Canada’s banks have not been hit as hard as those of many other countries.

Harper is expected to share the lessons Canadian financial institutions have learned with the G20 summit in Washington on Nov. 15, where world leaders will be looking to lay the groundwork to calm the global economic crisis, said Taruc.

There’s “no doubt we have to be all pulling in the same direction internationally,” said Anthony.

“But I don’t think Canada’s going to be advocating … fancy new world government structures to regulate banks.”

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This article was posted: Thursday, November 6, 2008 at 1:33 pm

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