Joe Oliver, President and CEO of the Investment Dealers Association of Canada, today presented the Association’s submission “Rebuilding Investor Confidence in Canada’s Capital Markets” to the Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce.
The submission outlines steps the IDA has taken to enhance investor confidence in our markets. They include Policy 11, Analyst Standards, which imposes stringent new requirements to manage conflicts of interest and enhance the independence of research analysts; more robust enforcement, including fines on firms and individuals exceeding $6 million in the first three quarters of 2002; and a new free, impartial consumer redress system, the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments, to complement the current Arbitration process for clients of IDA Member firms.
The IDA provided the Senate Committee with specific recommendations regarding Canadian adoption of the U.S. Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, calling for implementation that reflects the realities of the Canadian marketplace. In particular, care should be taken to ensure the benefits from regulatory reform outweigh the compliance costs for small and medium size companies.
The IDA urged the federal and provincial governments to act decisively and quickly to address the lack of a single national regulator for the securities industry. It said governments and regulators should pursue simultaneously and on parallel tracks two alternatives:
- a comprehensively harmonized provincial regulatory system; and
- a single national regulator, under federal or provincial jurisdiction. Search for a new structure should not impede the need for rapid and substantive improvements in the current system.
A copy of the submission is available at www.ida.ca.