Following a meeting of the Provincial-Territorial Council of Ministers of Securities Regulation in Quebec City on Monday, Quebec finance minister Nicolas Marceau blasted the latest federal effort to develop a national regulator.
Marceau suggested that the other provinces would not be signing on to a deal announced last week between British Columbia, Ontario and the federal government to create a co-operative national regulator.
“We are maintaining our consensus that the current regulation system is efficient and that we must continue to improve it,” Marceau said. “I would like to point out that it is collaboration between the provinces in a spirit of respect for their constitutional fields of jurisdiction that has enabled us to adopt one of the best securities oversight systems in the world.”
Marceau also continued to lambaste the federal government for its continued efforts to create a national framework for securities regulation, insisting that it is entirely a provincial matter. And, he continued to threaten possible legal action to block the federal effort.
“Quebec deplores the federal government’s relentless attempts to interfere with securities regulation, an exclusively provincial field of jurisdiction. Since the federal project obviously seeks to enable Ottawa to do indirectly what the Supreme Court prohibited it from doing directly, we have asked our legal experts to closely examine the federal government’s intentions. We will not hesitate to turn to the courts,” he added.
In the meantime, Marceau said that the federal government is creating uncertainty in the market that could undermine investor confidence. And, he repeated his concern that the government is aiming gut Quebec’s financial industry.
“We do not have any interest in participating in a project that seeks to centralize in Toronto regulation of the financial sector. The Quebec financial sector represents over 150,000 jobs. We are doing everything possible to protect it and ensure its continued development,” he concluded.