Looks like our friends to the north are taking the approach that the U.S. has just given up on:

The Canadian government will buy up C$50 billion ($40 billion) more in insured mortgages from banks as part of a series of steps announced on Wednesday to improve the availability of long-term credit.

The move came as U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said he was backing away from buying troubled mortgage assets using a $700 billion bailout fund. Canadian officials said the key difference between the two approaches is that Canadian mortgages are not in distress.

Other measures taken by Ottawa included making it cheaper to use government insurance to guarantee bank borrowing, loosening regulations for banks to allow them more sources of funding, and boosting the borrowing authority of the government’s Business Development Bank by C$1.8 billion.

(Full article at Reuters)

Canada certainly considers themselves to be a socialist country in many regards, so this action is not without precedent. However, socialism these days is simply a relative term. Basically, every country on earth has participated in some form of socialism, it’s just a question of which industries are receiving the bulk of the “benefits”.

With U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson declaring that he will no longer be purchasing mortgage-backed securities with the $700 billion, it’s interesting to see that Canada is continuing down that path. Even with the famous capitalist Donald Trump stating that the bailout has failed (at least in its original form), Canada has apparently not gotten that memo.

All I can say is, good luck, Canada… You’re going to need it…