I don’t think we’d ever see this happen in the U.S.  I know we didn’t see this happen in 2005-6 when it should have happened in the US.  Sometimes culture (both national culture and corporate culture) does make a big difference.

Canada’s top bankers are pushing the government to clamp down on the mortgage market to cool off the rise in home prices.

The heads of the country’s six largest banks have privately told policy makers that they fear the wide-ranging economic fallout of a U.S. style binge-and-collapse in housing. To head off any chance of that happening, they are willing to accept tighter rules on mortgages that would slow the real estate market, even though it would mean forgoing some short-term profits from giving out ever bigger mortgages as home prices jump.

The chief executives of the Big Six made their point last November, when they met with Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney. The country’s top commercial bankers, who between them control more than three-quarters of the country’s $940-billion mortgage market, said then that they wanted the government to look at far-reaching options, such as raising the minimum down payment to as much as 10 per cent and shortening the maximum amortization period to 30 years.

via Big Six banks urge Ottawa to tighten mortgage rules – The Globe and Mail.