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“At its peak in March 2009, support for Canadian banks reached $114-billion. To put that into perspective, that would have made up seven per cent of the Canadian economy in 2009 and was worth $3,400 for every man, woman and child in Canada.”

A spokesman for Finance Minster Jim Flaherty said MacDonald got it wrong.

“Despite conspiracy theories to the contrary, there was no ‘secret bailout,’” said Flaherty spokesperson Chisholm Pothier. “Even a cursory look at the facts, readily available and published many times, indicates this report is completely baseless.”

To some extent, the report and the rebuttal to it are a matter of how the facts are interpreted.

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Where MacDonald says “bailout,” a finance ministry official says “liquidity support.” While MacDonald said the government tried to hide the numbers even from Access to Information requests, the official said the bank funding was “clearly, publicly laid out — repeatedly.”

MacDonald used public filings by banks, government agencies, and financial regulators to provide what he called a composite picture of the flow of money between financial institutions and the individual Canadian banks struggling in the midst of a global recession.

All of the loans provided by the government as part of its relief program for Canadian lenders have been paid back in full, said Pothier.

The problems for the banks began when the credit crunch in the United States put the squeeze on Canadian lenders in late 2007.