Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says he won't follow the U.K. in its decision to tax bonuses some top Canadian bankers take home.

"We want to grow Canada as a financial centre; we don't want to impose punitive taxes on anybody," he said.

Flaherty said he would insist that Canadian bankers follow new G20 guidelines on bonuses, including making the size of executive bonuses proportional to company performance, and paying top bankers in company stock.

He said the regulator, the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, is monitoring Canadian bank compliance with the G20 standards.

Flaherty was responding to a Thursday newspaper column written by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy that suggested imposing a new international tax on bonuses.

On Wednesday, the British government imposed a one-time tax of 50 per cent on bank bonuses.

The column suggested that the tax should be in place globally because it is not fair for taxpayers to fund government bailouts of banks while bankers personally profit from large bonuses.

A separate report in the Globe and Mail released Monday showed that Canadian bankers made $8.3 billion dollars in bonuses this year. The report found that this number was 18 per cent higher than in 2008.

The column by Brown and Sarkozy said that whatever action is taken to stabilize the world's economies -- whether it be a tax on bonuses, insurance premiums or financial transaction levies --the actions must be applied consistently around the globe in order to properly work.

But Flaherty said these changes are not necessary in Canada.

"This is not the United Kingdom, this is not the United States," he said. "We did not have to use taxpayers' money to bail out banks in Canada."

Nancy Hughes Anthony, the president of the Canadian Bankers Association said the $8.3 billion in bonuses includes all bank employees, not just those at the top.

"This is compensation that is paid annually to people in the banks from the teller ... up to the CEO," she told CTV's Power Play.

"It sounds certainly like a big number and it is a big number. It will be paid to the majority of 263,000 Canadians who work in banks," she said.

"Top executives, their bonuses will be made public and they are always made public at the time of the annual meetings of the big banks," she added.

With files from The Canadian Press