OTTAWA (Reuters)—Leaders at the G20 summit next week will study a recommendation that they adopt policies to address risk in the global financial system, a Canadian official said Friday.

"The leaders will be discussing a recommendation on the need to complement the current approach to financial sector regulation, with policy mechanisms that address systematic risk more directly," said Jack Aubry, a spokesman for the Finance Ministry in Ottawa.

Global policymakers are trying to cobble together reforms to financial regulation to prevent future crises like the one spawned by the U.S. subprime mortgage bubble, which exposed the pervasiveness of opaque, little-understood financial instruments throughout the global financial system and eventually led to the worst recession since the 1930s.

The G20 powers meeting in London on April 2 are expected to discuss proposals to give regulators more power to watch over the health of the global financial system rather than just regulate individual institutions, in the hopes that no risky behavior will go unnoticed.

At the domestic level, countries are also looking at ways of bringing their regulators together into a single oversight body.

Canada, for example, does not have a single agency that oversees the entire financial system in order to detect and prevent the buildup of excessive risk, which could potentially spill over into the economy.

The Globe and Mail newspaper reported on Friday that the Canadian government plans an overhaul of its system with the creation of a new committee to coordinate regulation. The committee would include the Finance Ministry, the central bank, the banking regulator as well as the federal housing agency and deposit insurance corporation, the newspaper said.

Mr. Aubry said he could not confirm the Globe report and said, "There are no plans to form a new committee."

The Obama administration and U.S. lawmakers are looking at a proposition there to monitor and manage broad financial risks in the economy. No single agency now has that job.