• Canadian banks earned net income of about $20 billion in 2006, and made $1.115 trillion in loans.
• Canadian banks have a higher rate of total shareholder return than banks in other strong banking economies.
• Over one-half of the banks’ Canadian employees are in Ontario.
• Employees in deposit-taking institutions in Toronto number more than 80,000. In North America, only New York has a higher number.

Banks are regulated by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), an agency of the federal government. Supervisory and regulatory information about Canadian banks is available from OSFI.

The Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation (CDIC), a member-funded Crown corporation, provides an additional level of security for depositors in member banks by insuring savings accounts and certain investments.

Credit unions and caisses-populaires also provide day-to-day financial services. Most of them are quite local in scope, or are intended for members of a specific occupation or ethnic group. There are over 1,100 across the country, but most of them operate only in their home provinces. They are provincially regulated; in Ontario, the regulator is the Financial Services Commission of Ontario (FSCO). In 2006, Ontario’s 200-plus credit unions made loans totalling $15.5 billion to their 1.5 million members.