A senior official at the Bank of Canada is calling for more competition in the banking sector to better serve Canadians and the economy.<\/p>\n
Senior deputy governor Carolyn Rogers laid out her case for a more competitive Canada in a speech at the Canadian Club in Toronto on Thursday morning.<\/p>\n
Rogers sounded the alarm in a speech last year on Canada\u2019s productivity crisis, arguing that as business investment levels flagged, the resilience of the economy and Canadians\u2019 quality of life were at risk.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, she said that issue took on greater urgency when the United States launched its trade war earlier this year.<\/p>\n
A more productive economy is better equipped to handle that shock, Rogers argued, and competition is a path to productivity.<\/p>\n
\u201cHigher productivity won\u2019t make Canada immune to U.S. trade policy, but it would help buffer the effect of tariffs,\u201d she said in prepared remarks.<\/p>\n
Labour productivity \u2014 how much Canadian industry produces per hour worked \u2014 fell one per cent in the second quarter as trade uncertainty fuelled a slowdown in manufacturing output. Productivity has declined in six of the last eight quarters in Canada.<\/p>\n
Rogers speculated in an onstage conversation after her speech that years of relying on proximity to the United States may have contributed to the productivity crisis in Canada.<\/p>\n
The country had grown accustomed to U.S. demand for Canadian resources and free trade between the North American allies fuelling economic growth, allowing weak productivity to fester beneath the surface.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe we got a little complacent and relied too much on that relationship. But we got a big dose of reality recently,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Dropping interprovincial trade barriers is a start to boosting competition, but Rogers said Canada needs \u201cto think bigger than that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rogers focused her speech on the banking sector, which she said is accurately described as an oligopoly \u2013 an industry dominated by just a few main players.<\/p>\n
The supremacy of Canada\u2019s Big Six banks has offered stability to the financial sector, she acknowledged, and the profitability of their operations has made those institutions less likely to take major risks with Canadians\u2019 money.<\/p>\n
But Rogers said there are trade-offs to both promoting too much competition and keeping industries too insulated from outside forces.<\/p>\n
The more firms compete, the harder they\u2019ll work to innovate, which Rogers said will drive down prices for Canadians while boosting the economy.<\/p>\n
\u201cGreater contestability, more new entrants and more innovation in our financial sector would lead to competition that\u2019s good for consumers, for productivity and for our economy,\u201d she said. \u201cWe should lean into it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rogers pointed to the development of an open banking framework \u2013 a concept endorsed by Ottawa that sees consumers take more control over their own financial data, making it easier to switch banks \u2013 as one path toward more competition in the sector.<\/p>\n
A forthcoming plan to switch to a real-time payments system in Canada that would allow smaller firms to cut out big banks as a middleman in their services would also help boost competition, she said.<\/p>\n
Rogers said policy-makers must strike the right balance of strong competition law in a mix with appropriate levels of regulation and incentives to spur long-needed boosts in productivity.<\/p>\n
She also said during the Q&A on Thursday that the \u201cnext frontier in banking\u201d surrounds the digitization of assets.<\/p>\n
Rogers said Canada ought to follow the leads of Europe and the United States in tabling legislation to regulate stablecoins \u2014 a form of cryptocurrency pegged to the value of a traditional asset like a fiat currency to give it a degree of stability for ease of use in payment systems.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to have our own framework here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Industry Minister M\u00e9lanie Joly said in a speech at Canada\u2019s annual Competition Summit last week the federal government will be \u201chawkish\u201d on competition as Ottawa seeks to build a more resilient economy in the face of U.S. tariffs.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 9, 2025.<\/p>\n
By Craig Lord<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A senior official at the Bank of Canada is calling for more competition in the banking sector to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[4498,45,49,48,46,133],"class_list":["post-200329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-banks","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy","tag-finance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}