The Ontario government is proposing a new bill, Right Choices Act (Budget Measures), 2003, that would give income trusts liability protection, and it would amend various civil liability provisions.

The bill proposes a new act, the Trust Beneficiaries Liability Act, 2003, to clarify that investors in publicly traded trusts would not be liable for the activities of the trust or the trustees.

Government spokesman, Christian Bode, also says that Ontario will be considering whether to bring in governance requirements for trusts, similar to the ones corporations face.

The Ontario government will also make changes to the Securities Act, proposing technical changes to the civil liabilities portion of the act. These provisions would give broader rights to secondary market investors to sue.

The proposed amendments to the Community Small Business Investment Funds Act would permit labour sponsored investment funds to increase their investment in listed companies. The restriction on investments in companies listed on a stock exchange would be relaxed so that a Labour Sponsored Investment Fund could invest up to 25% of its investments in a year in listed companies instead of the current limit of 15%. It would also be amended to increase the maximum asset size of an eligible business for the purposes of the small business investment requirement from $5 million to $6 million.

The incentives available to individual investors and certain corporations for investing in a Community Small Business Investment Fund would be increased from a maximum of 15% to a maximum of 30%. The maximum incentive an individual or corporation would be able to claim is $150,000.

A proposed amendment to the Income Tax Act will enshrine a series of promised tax cuts, cutting the capital tax, dropping the surtax for people with taxable income of less than $75,000, amid other measures.

http://www.gov.on.ca/FIN/english/media/2003/bke-budbill.htm