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

He said that 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 also functioned well, in part due to the fact that they are well capitalized.

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 G-20 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.