During the Harper administration, we witnessed the collapse of the economy in Greece and Cyrus, where the instituitional banks of those countries held the citizen's money hostage.
We also saw the institution of new legislation tabled by the House of Commons that provided for a similar "bail-in" process to be enacted here in Canada through the "Jobs Growth and Long Term Prosperity" Action Plan.
"The Government proposes to implement a "bail-in" regime for systemically important banks. This regime will be designed to ensure that, in the unlikely event that a systemically important bank depletes its capital, the bank can be recapitalized and returned to viability through the very rapid conversion of certain bank liabilities into regulatory capital." - Enacted into parliment by Canada’s Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty.
Michel Chossudovsky—professor of economics at the University of Ottawa describes in his article at The Centre for Research on Globalization, details how this could first affect the 300 provincial level credit unions and cooperative banks, while protecting the interestes of Canada’s “big five” banks, Royal Bank of Canada, TD Canada Trust, Scotiabank, Bank of Montreal and CIBC.