The Globe and Mail reports in its Thursday, March 26, edition that Canada's banks should pay close attention to what its counterparts are doing south of the border, where regulators are loosening the rules dictating how much capital banks must maintain as a cushion against shocks. The Globe's guest columnist Chris Gay writes that it is a move some see as a slippery slope to the next financial crisis, and one that could encourage Canada to take similar measures, in a kind of regulatory race-to-the-bottom. The Federal Reserve provisionally approved a measure on March 19 that would ease capital-adequacy regulations tightened after the 2008 financial crisis in an effort to make Wall Street safe for capitalism. Canada has fairly tight capital rules that make its banking sector one of the world's most stable. Some say stability comes at the cost of suppressing lending, and warn that Canadian banks will suffer a disadvantage vis-à-vis less-restrained American banks unless its rules are eased too. National Bank of Canada chief Laurent Ferreira is calling for some form of looser capital constraints to bolster lending to small businesses. The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions is leaning in a similar direction.