In a panel discussion at the Investment Dealers Association’s annual conference on Monday, the heads of the Alberta, B.C. and Ontario securities commissions outlined their efforts to produce more efficient, effective securities regulation.

British Columbia Securities Commission chairman, Doug Hyndman, discussed the BCSC’s deregulation project and attempted to assuage some of the industry’s concerns that its move to overhaul regulation would take it further away from industry harmonization. “Some people think we are going off on a tangent,” said Hyndman. “I don’t think so.” He emphasized that the BCSC remains committed to harmonization.

The Alberta Securities Commission’s Steve Sibold addresses the Uniform Securities Law project, which he is heading up, and aims to develop a uniform securities act and uniform rules for the industry across Canada. He said that the team on the project is about halfway through the act and is on target for completing it by the end of 2003. In the fall, the team hopes to publish some of its work for comment.

Sibold also noted that the USL project would likely also introduce civil liability for continuous disclosure into the system.

Ontario Securities Commission chairman David Brown tackled the issue of continuous disclosure. The move to focus on continuous disclosure will lead to the creation of continuous disclosure review teams, similar to the OSC’s 15-person team, across the country.

Brown said that regulators also expect to introduce a new rule in the next couple of days allowing Canadian companies to file financials using U.S. generally accepted accounting principles., subject to reconciliation for an interim period. It will also allow filing in compliance with international accounting standards.

Regulators will also be beefing up their requirements for management discussion and analysis in financial filings, in line with increased disclosure obligations introduced by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission after the Enron debacle.

Brown also revealed that the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants will be proposing an independent public oversight board to monitor the work of auditors and accountants. Securities regulators will require issuers to deal with auditing firms that have been cleared by the oversight board.

Brown said that he expects this initiative and other CICA initiatives to put Canada in line with U.S. standards. He noted that there is no incentive for Canada to have tougher standards than the U.S., for fear of sending business south.

Several delegates posed some tough questions to the panel, moderated by the IDA president and CEO Joe Oliver.

Canaccord Capital Corp.’s president & COO, Mike Greenwood, led the charge, suggesting that the multiplicity of self-regulators needs to be eliminated, possibly rolling together the IDA, Mutual Fund Dealer’s Association and market regulator, RS Inc.

OSC chair, David Brown, allowed that such a move may be beneficial, but suggested that it would really be up to the industry to decide how its self-regulation should be configured. Oliver echoed Brown’s sentiment on the issue, saying that it will be up to the industry to decide whether it makes sense to roll together the SROs.

Vic Rogers, director of Calgary’s Leede Financial Markets Inc., inquired about the persistent logjam of IDA rules that have been approved by its board, but languish at the provincial securities commissions awaiting approval. BCSC chair, Doug Hyndman, allowed that the regulators have been too slow in signing off on IDA rules in the past, but he suggested that they have been “chipping away at the backlog”; and that he believes that the situation is improving.

Greenwood returned to the floor to ask the regulators what they intend to do about the regulatory cost problem the industry faces in terms of the provincial securities commissions’ big surpluses, and their disparate fee collection regimes, among other inefficiencies.

Brown responded that the regulators are moving to a neutral approach to fee collection, and that the OSC intends to introduce its redesigned fee collection model in the next few days. He suggested that this may have the effect of cutting fees by about 20% on average. But, Brown allowed that some of the smaller provinces have not yet embraced the “neutral” approach to fees.