No new bank regulations: Flaherty

Canada will not join other countries in proposing major changes to regulations for the banking sector, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Friday.

While the United States, Britain and other countries are moving toward major reformsof their dysfunctional financial services sector, Canada won't need to because it has already put in place many of those safeguards, Flaherty said.

"Canadians legitimately can be proud that in this serious crisis our system has functioned well and our financial institutions, including our life insurance companies, have functioned well also," he said.

"They're all well capitalized, and that's the major problem, I think, internationally. Not all of the banks are well capitalized, [or] the other financial institutions."

Flaherty had earlier confirmed he would not seek to limit compensation for executives a contentious issue in the U.S. although he said Canada would abide by guidelines agreed to in meetings of the G20 countries.

The minister said he has written to Crown corporations and asked them to comply with the Financial Stability Board guidelines, which call for executive bonuses to be spread out so that they do not encourage short-term risk-taking.

In a major address on Wall Street this week, Obama warned that major reforms need to occur so that the abuses that led to the subprime mortgage meltdown are not repeated.

News reports say the White House also intends to place the Federal Reserve in charge of overseeing bank compensation policies for executives.