While Quebec has definitively rejected the latest federal effort to create a national securities regulator with British Columbia and Ontario, the other provinces say they are going to evaluate the idea independently,.
Following its latest meeting in Quebec City on Tuesday, the Provincial-Territorial Council of Ministers of Securities Regulation announced that, apart from Quebec, the rest of the members of the Council “will conduct their own due diligence regarding the best path forward.”
Last week, B.C., Ontario and the federal government announced that they had agreed to establish common regulator that aims to come into being by mid 2015. The proposed new authority would administer a common set of rules, and new federal legislation to ensure oversight of systemic risk, among other things. The initiative hopes to get the other provinces on board by the end of January 2014.
It’s not yet clear which, if any, other provinces will join this latest federal effort. In the meantime, the provincial ministers said Tuesday that they have agreed to continue to develop a new Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) in order to further improve the existing provincial system.
As they announced earlier this year, they are seeking to establish a “network-based cooperative regulatory model” that will include a coordinated legislative process for developing harmonized securities laws that continues to respect local needs.
The Council also said that its model would aim to improve inter-governmental cooperation and information sharing among financial sector regulators (including with federal regulators) to improve stability and address systemic risks.
And, it said it will seek a model that: formalizes decision-making processes; identifies priority policy initiatives, and provides direction to securities regulators on major policy issues; and, that it will adopt a three-year action plan, to be updated annually, describing planned improvements to securities legislation.
“The Council believes working together within a common regulatory framework is in the interests of all Canadians,” it said, adding that it recognizes that “continuous improvements to the Canadian securities regulatory system are desirable to meet the needs of investors and the capital markets.”
At this latest meeting the Council also endorsed the new business plan for 2013-2016 that was released by the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) earlier this year, and it committed to “its timely implementation.”