The Ontario government reiterated its commitment to the Cooperative Capital Markets Regulatory System (CCMRS) in Thursday’s budget, and outlined several planned changes to securities laws.

While the target date for the launch of the CCMRS has been pushed back to the fall of 2016, the government said Thursday that, in the meantime, it will propose assorted changes to update securities laws in several areas, including proposed amendments to enforcement provisions related to insider trading and tipping; amendments relating to cease trade orders designed to increase efficiency, and harmonize with the approach in other jurisdictions; and changes to give the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) broader tools to ensure an accurate, reliable and transparent proxy voting infrastructure.

Additionally, the government said that it would propose changes to the Securities Act and Commodity Futures Act that would increase the scope of OSC compliance and continuous disclosure reviews. And, it stressed its commitment to increasing access to capital, noting that the OSC is expected to bring forward several new prospectus exemptions this year, including an exemption to allow crowdfunding.

Several other proposed changes were flagged in the budget that are primarily intended to bring Ontario securities law into closer alignment with the other provinces that are planning to participate in the CCMRS, including amendments to the take-over bid provisions; and, the adoption of more robust registration oversight tools, that are more harmonized with approaches in other CCMRS-participating jurisdictions, and with the draft Provincial Capital Markets Act that was released last year as part of the CCMRS project.

Additionally, the government reiterated its commitment to reviewing the mandates of the Financial Services Commission of Ontario (FSCO), the Financial Services Tribunal (FST), and the Deposit Insurance Corporation of Ontario (DICO), and consider changes to their governing legislation. The panel that has been appointed to carry out the review will be conducting consultations this spring, the budget notes, and it is expected to deliver its recommendations to the government by early next winter.