Let me repeat: Canada lacks the equivalent of regional banks, and that's a problem for entrepreneurs looking for banking (let alone loans) for new ventures.
Canada also had its own duration mis-match crisis with Asset-Backed Commercial Paper where debtors expected to just roll over the paper every 30-45 days... until they couldn't and it froze up. Took a decade to unwind.
https://www.advisor.ca/news/industry-news/lesson-to-learn-fr...
> There are no regional banks whatsoever
Sure there are. Laurentian Bank is almost entirely based in Quebec. National Bank of Canada has almost all of its branches in Ontario, Quebec and NB.
Then there are the credit unions which are almost entirely provincial (with a riskier backstop than that of US credit unions).
Source: https://www.canada.ca/en/financial-consumer-agency/services/... (and the marketing campaigns of the credit unions)
That's inaccurate. They don't the market share small US banks do collectively, and none of them are particularly focussed on tech startup, but they do exist, alongside credit unions - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banks_and_credit_union....
The ATB seems particularly of note - directly owned and backstopped by the Alberta Provincial government, has ~15% of banking in the province.
>Unfortunately, SVB blew its top off. But the system itself is good.
Yes. Canadians who brag about how none of their banks had to be bailed out in the 2008 crisis are a) wrong (they received tens of billions from Ottawa, and US TARP money), and b) don't realize that the Big Five Canadian banks have far, far, far more market share than the US's Big Four. As you said, there is no equivalent of a Silicon Valley Bank in Canada. There are no regional banks whatsoever; no smaller player that may be more friendly to startups, or otherwise more flexible, than the Big Five.