Big Banks Received Billions in Bailout Funds

Canadian bank bailouts | BCBusiness
Canada’s major financial institutions, including Scotiabank, BMO and TD, all reportedly took bailouts totalling $114 billion.

A new study asserts that Canada’s top financial institutions accepted around $114 billion in bailout money during the Great Recession.

As procrastinating Canadians scramble to file their last-minute income tax returns today, taxpayers are just now finding out how many of their tax dollars went to bailing out the country’s biggest financial institutions.
 
During the peak of the Great Recession, Canada’s largest banks received up to $114 billion to keep them afloat, according to a new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. That breaks down to $3,400 in financial aid from every Canadian to help out big names such as TD, BMO and Scotiabank.
 
Comparatively, Canadians only paid about one-tenth that amount to keep the car industry from going bust back in 2009.
 
The alarmingly large amount in assistance from the government, the Bank of Canada and other sources forces taxpayers to question Canada’s title as one of the world’s safest banking havens. Just last month, Moody’s Investors Service named our banking system one of the soundest in the world. And many of us were under the illusion that Canada and our banks emerged from the financial crisis relatively unscathed, but the report indicates we fared far worse than we previously thought.