Chartered Banks

Until deregulation, banking in Canada was done through five major Chartered Banks and a smaller tier of credit unions and trust companies that tried, officially at least, to be sensitive to local conditions. Most of the small credit unions have been swallowed by larger ones, the trust companies are either bankrupt or owned by larger financial corporations, the Chartered Banks are on every street corner with their jaws open for business, and now there’s a tier of tower-owning offshore banks in the major cities that never seem to have any physical customers and are presumably here to oversee and extend our foreign debt. All are now outrageously profitable and uniformly inhospitable to the small businesses they spend millions convincing us they’re really there to help, with the original Chartered Banks leading the way. See BANK MERGERS

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