OSFI opens a direct supervisory channel to China’s banking regulator
Canadian financial institutions stand to gain wider access to the Chinese market under agreements signed in Vancouver on November 8 and 9, and the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions now has a standing channel to its Chinese counterpart.
The two sides “agreed to enhance financial sector cooperation, including on financial services market access, and to foster engagement between capital market and financial regulatory authorities,” according to the joint factsheet issued by the Department of Finance Canada.
OSFI and China’s National Financial Regulatory Administration signed a co-operation agreement establishing the Financial Regulatory and Supervisory Dialogue, and an inaugural meeting has already been held, Finance Canada said in a news release on the Vancouver meetings.
Two further instruments were signed: a memorandum of understanding between the finance ministries, and terms of reference for a Financial Working Group.
The factsheet also records that both sides “welcome the implementation of the bilateral currency swap arrangement.”
The Financial Working Group launched in Beijing on April 3, bringing together officials from the People’s Bank of China, the China Securities Regulatory Commission and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange with the Bank of Canada, OSFI and the Department of Finance, per a joint statement published by Finance Canada.
In the Finance Canada release, Finance and National Revenue Minister François-Philippe Champagne said the Vancouver talks covered two-way trade, investment, and financial cooperation with China.
The same release quotes International Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu saying Canadian goods exports to China reached “almost $35bn between January and September this year,” a 39 percent increase.
Two-way services trade came to $13.8bn in 2025, with Canadian services exports at $9.7bn.
Ottawa and Beijing extended to the end of 2028 a January arrangement granting Chinese market access for Canadian agricultural and seafood exports in exchange for Canadian access for Chinese steel and aluminum, The Canadian Press reported.
Canola seed exports to China rose 84 percent to $1.91bn from $1.04bn against the same period a year earlier, Sidhu told CP.
Vina Nadjibulla, co-founder of the Centre for Strategic Statecraft, told CP in an emailed statement that “Ottawa is increasingly having to navigate its economic relationships with Beijing and Washington simultaneously, and decisions made in one relationship inevitably have implications for the other.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney meets Xi Jinping at the APEC summit in Shenzhen on November 18 and 19.
“I will be raising the importance with which we attach to the non-interference in our affairs by China and other countries,” Carney told reporters, Reuters reported.
The United Kingdom revived its Economic and Financial Dialogue with China in January 2025, producing an “agreement to deepen cooperation in wealth management through a feasibility study for a UK-China Wealth Connect” and a UK-China Pensions Symposium, according to a UK government factsheet.
Carney has set a target of doubling non-US exports within a decade and raising exports to China by 50 percent by 2030, telling Canadians in October 2025 that “the US has fundamentally changed its approach to trade, raising its tariffs to levels last seen during the Great Depression,” NBC News reported.
Washington imposed 50 percent tariffs on roughly $20bn of Canadian goods in August 2026, prompting retaliation, Al Jazeera reported, and tariff questions now reach advisors directly from clients.
