Gordon Thiessen: Why a floating exchange rate regime makes sense for Canada  Speech by Mr Gordon Thiessen, Governor of the Bank of Canada, to the Chambre de commerce du Montréal métropolitain, Montreal, Quebec, 4 December 2000.
Lenders may have become careless because they, like many people at the time, expected that house prices would continue to rise – thereby allowing borrowers to build up equity in their homes – and that credit would remain easily available, so that borrowers would be able to refinance if necessary.