In the wake of the collapse of California-based Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland says Canada’s financial institutions are “stable and resilient.”
Freeland held a virtual meeting on March 14 with provincial and territorial finance ministers to discuss Canadian implications of SVB’s failure. Also attending the meeting were Canada’s Superintendent of Financial Institutions Peter Routledge and the Bank of Canada’s Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn Rogers.
Freeland says the group discussed the current state of Canada’s financial system and “ongoing developments” related to SVB’s collapse.
She adds that the meeting follows a number of previous ones she held between March 10 and March 14 with other heads of national and regional Canadian financial institutions on the same subject.
“The federal government can assure Canadians our financial institutions are stable and resilient,” she said in the statement.
Changing Risks
The superintendent also sought to assure Canadians that his office’s seizure of SVB’s Canadian assets is a measure taken solely as a “result of circumstances particular to Silicon Valley Bank in the United States.”However, Routledge’s office is also taking steps to begin conducting daily liquidity check-ins with Canadian banks, according to a Globe and Mail report citing anonymous sources, with the goal of the regular checks being to more closely monitor banks’ financial health in a time of uncertainty.
“As risks change, so do the frequency and intensity of these efforts. Such adjustments reflect a prudent approach to performance of its supervisory function,” OSFI wrote on March 14.
The office added that it is in regular contact with contact the financial institutions it supervises and that it is also bound by both legislation and regulation to keep all information it gathers confidential.
