CCMRS draft initial regulations delayed until spring

In Friday’s announcement, the provinces said that although they have made “significant progress” on the draft regulations, the regulations will not be ready for publication by their planned deadline. Instead, the provinces say they “expect to publish the draft initial regulations for comment in the early spring of 2015.”

Even then, the initial rules will not include draft regulations to be created under proposed new federal legislation, known as the Capital Markets Stability Act (CMSA). The CCMRS says that if any regulations under the CMSA are developed before the new regulator becomes operational, they will be published separately for comment.

Any rules that are developed after the new authority becomes operational will follow the rulemaking processes adopted by the new legislation. As well, the legislation itself still has to be finalized and passed (the comment period for draft federal and provincial legislation is slated to end on Dec. 8, after being extended from its initial November deadline).

The participating provinces also indicated Friday that their initial proposed rules will “substantially maintain the harmonization achieved under the current structure”. They say that this will simplify the transition to the new cooperative system, and “provide a strong basis for cooperation with provinces that choose not to participate.”

The initial draft rules “will be based on the existing rules of the participating provinces, including the existing national and multilateral instruments,” the provinces say. They will only deviate from those rules, if necessary, to fit them under the proposed Provincial Capital Markets Act (PCMA); and, to eliminate differences in requirements in order to create a single set of regulations that will apply across the participating jurisdictions.