The Globe and Mail reports in its Wednesday edition that on Tuesday that President Donald Trump mistakenly declared "Canada doesn't even allow U.S. banks to open or do business there." The Globe's guest columnist John Turley-Ewart writes that U.S. banks have long been welcome in Canada. A large U.S. retail bank operating in Canada with a national branch network would be applauded here from a competition standpoint. It is hard to know what Mr. Trump was talking about. He did not elaborate beyond that factually incorrect line. We can only guess. Maybe he was talking about the fact that U.S. banks do not have much of a retail presence in Canada. However, the only obstacle to U.S. banks doing business in Canada on par with our country's big banks is common business sense, not Canadian banking rules. Although U.S. banks have operated here for more than a century, building franchises with a national network of retail branches is not economical in the face of the stiff competition from Canadian banks and the regulatory burden it entails. Today, 16 U.S. bank subsidiaries and branches carry on business in Canada and manage assets that exceed $100-billion, or nearly half of total foreign bank assets in the country.