Celebrate the conservative lending practices at the country's banks??

reportonbusiness.com: globeinvestor.com - Canada resale home price index rises in October

Canada's housing sector avoided the crash seen in the United States and other Western countries, partly because of the conservative lending practices at the country's banks, which are often considered to be among the world's soundest.

I wish such nonsense would stop being spread. I'm not sure how one would measure quantifying "sound lending practices", but I am sure that the globe didn't go through the exercise.

What it does seem like is that Canadian banks do not really have any lending standards at all. If they did, then it wouldn't be possible for someone with a down payment < 20% to have the same interest rates as someone with a >20% down payment as is the case right now.

The reason the Canadian banks have been so successful thus far is because they have a willing accomplice in the Canadian Government (through the CMHC) and a Central bank that defines reason by lowering interest rates to near zero (despite Australia, a similar economy, raising rates).
(I know Central bank apologists will say they are only following the US, but I respond that if you see the Titanic going into an iceberg, you find a different route)

If anything, ineptness and the lack of competition and innovation in Canada helped the banks because they didn't need to create innovative financial products to be profitable, their profits are all but assured by Canada's foreign ownership laws. Again, some will argue that Canadian banks had the foresight not to enter the US subprime market, but I would argue it wasn't foresight, but blindness about what is happening outside the Canadian borders because the getting was so good.