Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has echoed Mark Carney’s request that banks loosen up their lending.

“I expect [banks] to make it evident to us that they are taking steps to make [lending] more available in Canada,” Flaherty said yesterday.

Ottawa has provided billions of dollars in liquidity so banks can offload their mortgages.  Flaherty says, “We expect the banks to reciprocate. We expect the banks to provide adequate credit.”

Flaherty and Carney will meet with bank execs in January to discuss Canada’s tight lending market.

From our perspective–as a general observation–banks seem to be lending more freely than non-bank lenders these days.  In addition, it’s not the availability of credit so much as the price of credit that we’re seeing issues with.

Financing options have definitely decreased in the last 12 months (especially for subprime or commercial borrowers), but mortgage professionals are still finding ways to get tough deals done.