OpenRoad Toyota Port Moody

TORONTO - The federal government has created a high-powered committee, led by Stanley Hartt, to advise Finance Minister Jim Flaherty over the next year on how to improve credit availability in Canada.

The 10-member panel, consisting of private-sector executives from many of the country's top companies, has been mandated to consult with Flaherty on how the government's initiatives to improve access to credit are working.

``He wants us to tell him what we see on the street every day, in every day life,' Hartt explained Wednesday. ``Every one of us has had experiences or knowledge of situations where credit isn't available in the quantities required to help good businesses and consumers.'

Hartt, 71, previously a deputy minister of finance and chief of staff for former prime minister Brian Mulroney, said the primary objective of the committee is to advise Flaherty on gaps in the availability of credit.

``We're not trying to subsidize people wouldn't be able to get loans,'
explained Hartt, former chairman of Citigroup Global Markets Canada Inc., and now chairman of brokerage Macquarie Capital Markets Canada Ltd.

``We're talking about true credit-worthy borrowers on commercial terms.
We're trying to make sure we're filling gaps for credit-worthy borrowers where they can't get financing on commercial terms.'

Ottawa has attempted to tackle the lack of credit for businesses and households in the 2009 federal budget when it announced about $200 billion in initiatives, mostly to be deployed through its financial Crown corporations, designed to increase lending to businesses and households.

The formation of the advisory committee was part of that budgetary measure.

The group's other members include economist Leo de Bever, head of Alberta Investment Management Corp.; Luc Bertrand, former president of the Montreal exchange; Richard Bird, executive vice-president and chief financial officer of Enbridge Inc.; Gail Cook-Bennett, chair of Manulife Financial; Christian Chia, chief executive of OpenRoad Auto Group Ltd.; Sobeys chief executive Bill McEwan; Elyse Allan, chief executive of GE Canada; William Lovatt, executive vice-president and chief financial officer of Great-West Lifeco Inc.; and Siim Vanaselja, executive vice-president and chief financial officer of Bell Canada.

``Access to credit and financing is the number one issue facing Canadians and Canadian businesses,' Flaherty said Wednesday. ``Where gaps in credit availability remain, they must be identified and fixed. These eminent Canadians will provide their expertise to the government on how to ensure Canadians and Canadian businesses have access to financing to encourage the robust growth necessary to put the recession behind us.'

According to Hartt, the question for the committee is to help the government determine ``what delivery mechanisms and what structural institutional facilities need to be created to fill those gaps.'

The committee, which has not set a date for its first meeting, is scheduled to gather every month over the course of the next year and advise the minister on a continuous basis.

- Paul Vieira [Canwest News Service]