Mark Carney is now shrugging off concerns about Canada’s housing market.

As he steps up his battle to contain Britain’s rapidly growing house prices, Mr. Carney’s track record in Canada is coming under more scrutiny. And he’s fighting back by suggesting that Canada’s problems are peanuts next to those in the U.K.

In an interview with Sky News this weekend, Mr. Carney, the former Bank of Canada chief and current Bank of England governor, told his interviewer Dermot Murnaghan that “we could do more” to keep a lid on the British housing market, including limiting certain types of mortgages and ensuring individuals could afford loans at much higher interest rates.

In response, Mr. Murnaghan pointed out that Canada adopted some such measures when Mr. Carney was here, and suggested they haven’t worked. “Are you in danger of having been the governor in two countries that left behind them a housing boom?” Mr. Murnaghan asked.

Mr. Carney said that he left Canada at a time when inflation was on target and the economy was the best performing among the G7 nations.

Moreover, he said that “the housing market in Canada, in terms of valuation, is about 50 per cent less in terms of valuation metrics than the housing market in the United Kingdom. So let’s focus on the United Kingdom.

“The issues around the housing market in the United Kingdom, the longer-term structural issues I think you know, there are not sufficient houses built in the U.K.,” he added. “To go back to Canada, there are half as many people in Canada as in the U.K…twice as many houses are built every year in Canada as in the U.K., which just gives you a sense of the orders of magnitude of the supply problems.”

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