A packed public agenda, including a major meeting on the future of health-care funding, has caused more delays in the release of a long awaited paper on bank mergers, Finance Minister Ralph Goodale said Thursday.

The document, awaited anxiously by Canada’s big banks, has been delayed a few times but was widely expected by late summer. Completing the paper, however, is going to take longer than first thought because the bureaucracy has been busy with the first ministers’ meeting next week on financing health care, Goodale said, following a speech on health care and economy.

The delay will be a blow to the country’s big banks, which have been waiting well over a year for the federal paper that’s expected to set out public policy guidelines to be met before a merger could be approved. It was previously expected in June, then delayed by the federal election until end of summer.

Goodale said he hopes to wrap up his consultations with bank executives and finally produce the paper, “as rapidly as I can.”

Provincial premiers are meeting in Ottawa to discuss new funding for health care as well as other fiscal issues such as equalization payments the federal government distributes to less-wealthy provinces.