The deadline for getting other provinces to sign on to the co-operative regulator first proposed by British Columbia, Ontario and the federal government, and for crafting draft legislation, has been extended for three months.
The Dept. of Finance said Friday that the three governments have agreed to extend that deadline to April 30.
The original deadline to finalize a memorandum of agreement, and get other provinces signed on to the cooperative regulatory model that was proposed last September was January 31.
Finance Canada also said that the deadline for proposing initial draft rules has been pushed back to June 30, and the deadline for reaching agreements on integrating the participating provinces’ existing regulators is now August 29. Ottawa, B.C. and Ontario are still planning to launch the new regulator on July 1, 2015.
At this point, none of the other provinces or territories have agreed to join the new effort at creating at a national regulator. Alberta and Québec remain vocally opposed. (See Investment Executive, Provinces shun feds’ proposal, February 2014.)
Finance Canada said Friday that since the proposal was first announced, “substantial progress” has been made in drafting uniform provincial capital markets legislation and complementary federal legislation, along with a memorandum of agreement between the participants.
The three governments said that the delay will give them more time to complete this work “in an orderly fashion” and so that it “achieves its objectives”, while also providing an “opportunity for broader input in the development and finalization of the draft legislation and the framework agreements”.