I’ve complained much about Canadian banks in the past.

Perhaps too much

LONDON (Reuters) – The global financial crisis could have been avoided if every country had had a banking system like Canada’s, the governor of the Bank of Canada said on Saturday.

Asked in a BBC interview if the world could have been spared the crisis if everyone had had a banking system “as sober and sensible” as Canada’s, Mark Carney said: “Yes, I think, is the short answer.”

“What we did was that we had an absolute restriction on how much leverage, how much borrowing our banks could do,” he said.

“They didn’t like that and they would come in and complain about it regularly because it was stopping them from doing some of the sexier things that their international competitors were doing. But it turns out some of the sexier things that they were doing were quite foolish,” he told the BBC World Service.

Canada has the soundest banking system in the world, according to the World Economic Forum.

Canada avoided banking pitfalls, central bank gov. says

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