Much has been made of the Canadian financial sector’s outperformance throughout the financial crisis, yet Thursday’s budget includes some modest measures designed to help strengthen the sector further.

The 2010 budget includes steps to improve banks’ access to funding, make it easier to handle an institutional failure, as well as modernize the credit union and payments systems.

On the subject of bank funding, the budget promises legislation to create a new legal framework for covered bonds (which are asset-backed debt instruments). These products have been quite popular funding vehicles with financial firms in Europe, but have only recently been employed by banks in North America.

The International Monetary Fund has encouraged the creation of legislative and regulatory frameworks for covered bonds as a financing source for banks, noting that they can be preferable to other sorts of securitized products because they preserve the incentive for the issuing institution to monitor the quality of the underlying assets — unlike securitized products that entirely remove that risk from the issuer’s balance sheet.

“The legislation will increase legal certainty for investors in these debt instruments, thereby making it easier for Canadian financial institutions to access this low-cost source of funding,” the budget explains.

At the same time, the budget also proposes changes to enhance the ability of the Canada Deposit Insurance Corp. to deal with a possible bank failure. In last year’s budget, the government introduced a number of steps designed to prepare the CDIC and Finance to deal with threats to systemic stability. This year, it proposes changes to one of the CDIC’s resolution tools — in particular, its ability to establish a bridge institution to preserve critical bank functions in the event of a possible failure — to clarify that power.

Moreover, it proposes to give the CDIC the authority to impose new information and operational requirements on its’ members “to improve CDIC’s ability to quickly respond to the needs of insured depositors”.

At the same time, the government is planning to review one of the critical elements of the financial system’s infrastructure, the payments system. In Thursday’s budget it pledges to appoint an independent task force to conduct a comprehensive review of the payments system. “The task force will review the safety, soundness and efficiency of the payments system; whether there is sufficient innovation in the system; the competitive landscape; whether businesses and consumers are being well served; and whether current payment system oversight mechanisms remain appropriate,” it says.

The task force, which will be supported by a secretariat, is to be launched in the spring of this year, and will be asked to report back to the minister of finance with its’ recommendations by the end of 2011.

Along with possible changes to the payments system, the government is also seeking to enhance competition on the consumer side by creating a federal legislative regime for credit unions. “Allowing credit unions to grow and be competitive on a national scale will broaden choices for consumers by helping credit unions to attract new members and improve services to existing members across provincial borders,” the budget suggests.

Finally, the budget seeks to step up the fight against an insidious threat to the financial system — money laundering and terrorist financing — by bumping up the funding of the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada by $8 million per year. The budget also proposes measures to ensure that the provisions of the Criminal Code that apply to crimes related to money laundering and terrorist financing can be invoked in cases of tax evasion.

IE