The Ontario Securities Commission is republishing proposed conflict of interest rules for comment.

The Joint Securities Industry Committee on Conflicts of Interest (the so-called Hagg committee) was convened in 1996 with the mandate to examine the potential conflicts of interest that occur when salespersons and dealers participate in emerging company financings.

The committee produced a report in September 1997 outlining a number of recommendations for changes to the rules of self-regulatory organizations and to the provincial securities legislation. In September 1997, staff of the IDA, the Toronto Stock Exchange, the Montreal Exchange, the Alberta Stock Exchange and the Vancouver Stock Exchange formed a working group to implement the Hagg Report’s recommendations.

On August 28, 1998 the SRO Working Group published for comment draft rules. At the time, it was anticipated that each SRO would adopt this uniform set of rules. The Canadian Securities Administrators asked the IDA to make a number of changes to the 1998 draft rules. The revised rules were presented to and approved by the IDA Board in October of 1999; and were presented to the CSA for approval in March, 2000. Since then, the full implementation of the revised rules has been delayed due to further consideration by the CSA.

Further revisions have now been completed as a result of meetings that commenced in the spring of 2002, comprised of staff of the CSA, the IDA, Market Regulation Services Inc., the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Bourse de Montreal.

Due to these revisions and the time that has elapsed since they were first published for comment, it was determined that the conflict of interest rules should be published for comment again.