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Has your bank ever informed you of Bill C15 passed by the Trudeau government on June 22, 2016? The answer is very likely a NO.
The Bill referenced is called the “Bail-In Regime” which allows Canadian Big 6 Banks to confiscate your deposits and exchange them for shares in their bank to “bail them out” if they fall on hard times due to a financial crisis like 2008. That is correct, they can seize your deposits without notice or permission from you.
Coincidentally, if you believe in coincidences, the CDIC just started running a 15 second advertisement on television advising people that in the unlikely event that a Canadian bank fails you are covered for up to $100,000. That rule has been around since I started in finance in 1980 when it was $60,000 and then eventually increased to $100,000.
There is some argument as to how much you are covered for and how you can stretch the $100,000 using RRSPs, TFSAs, joint accounts and corporate accounts and I have read enough to not even give my opinion for fear it may be construed as wrong advice. Like I mentioned, I have done enough reading on this subject to understand that I don’t understand “for certain” what would happen in the event of a Canadian bank failure. And with all that has happened since 2008 and especially through the past three years there is always a possibility the once thought unbelievable could happen.
Another thing you may not be aware of was that during the financial crisis of 2008 Canadian Banks received a secret $114-Billion bailout from the Canadian taxpayer by way of our Federal government. This was not the official narrative, but a study done by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) describes how it was done without public knowledge and media fanfare. (see attachments below)
As a columnist for the Financial Post, John Greenwood pointed out in an April 2012 column, “the study by the CCPAS makes for interesting reading most of the information has already been widely disclosed by the Bank of Canada and Ottawa”.
So, what happened is that after the 2008 crash, Canada, the UK, USA, New Zealand and a host of other countries changed the rules for bailing out failing banks, taking the responsibility off of the taxpayer and onto the deposit holder. Yes, the US happened to do the same thing after their massive, “Too Big to Fail” public bail out of the banks in 2008-09, after allowing two banks to go broke, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.
Could it happen here in Canada today?
· Toronto and Vancouver are listed in the top 7 cities in the world for real estate being overvalued in “Bubble territory”.
· The Big 5 Canadian banks in September 2021 were holding a record $1.7 trillion in residential mortgages.
· Toronto new single family home sales fell 96% year over year in September.
· 25% of all currency in existence in Canada was printed in the past two years during a time that national home prices rose 34%
· The Bank of Canada continues to raise interest rates while inflation continues to rise.
And we haven’t even touched on the effect of lockdowns and the new “work from home” has had on Canadian small business. If downtown Saskatoon is any indication, small business, always considered the backbone to any successful democratic capitalist economy, has suffered massive hits.
We live in a time in history where there has never been this much debt. Over the past 40 years our governments, in their lust for power, have allowed us to live beyond our means by continually printing more currency and adding more debt. All of this has brought us to a point of no return, rapid inflation with no way out but a hard landing likely ending with a deep global recession or depression resulting in a massive financial transition such as the world has never experienced.
The best we can do is watch our backs and take all precautions possible to protect ourselves from another 2008 types of an event. No one is coming to our rescue. You can ask your MP or MLA and your banker if they have heard about the Bail-In Bill. They might not now about it, but it would be interesting to see their expression. ;)
When things get near the end, they tend to speed up so best not to procrastinate on taking action. Things appear slow right now which reminds me of some words that were shared with me awhile back. " When things slow down, think fast and when things go fast, think slow."
Yours in Faith, Family and Finance,
Daryl