TSX Group Inc. CEO Barbara Stymiest said Friday she believes the country can deal with contentious issues such as a national securities regulator despite the minority status of the new federal government.

Stymiest told securities industry representatives she believes that despite the election of a minority government the country should still be able to tackle big issues. She suggested that contentious issues, such as the sale of Petro-Canada and the implementation of the Kyoto accord, should still be able to proceed under a minority government. And, she hopes that the creation of a single, national securities regulator will fall into the same category.

“The most useful route, I believe, would be for Ottawa to put this issue on the federal-provincial agenda, preferably at the level of first ministers and most usefully after Alberta, Ontario, Quebec and the other provinces have talked their way through their differences this summer,” she said in a speech to the Canadian Securities Traders Association annual conference in in Kananaskis, Alta.

She argued that the federal government has the constitutional authority it requires to act. “The question is whether it is prepared to use it to bring the provinces to embrace the solutions the country needs,” she noted.

While the issue is often seen as a political one, Stymiest argued that it surely is not. “Businesses in every province want a simpler, less costly system. That’s not politics. It’s just good sense.”

“If the provinces are listening to their business constituencies, they would know the strength of the support that is out there for moving to a simpler, less costly system,” she said. “It’s not just the big national corporations that see the advantages.

The biggest beneficiaries will be small local companies that want to tap new sources of capital beyond provincial boundaries. “At the federal level, I believe – as I believed last winter when there was a majority government – that this is a matter, not of politics, but of governments meeting their responsibilities.”

Stymiest argued that the issue of regulation relates to Canada’s place in the world, not just to the needs of local, regional and national markets. “If we are to compete in the world, we need to catch up with the world. Otherwise, we’ll be leaving a needlessly complex set of obstacles in the way of global issuers and investors who otherwise have every reason to invest in our companies and trade on our exchanges. Solving this problem has little to do with there being a minority in Parliament.”

“There are no reasons for inaction in the choices Canadians made on June 28. The parliamentary universe may have turned in the sky, but the problems, if anything, are more urgent than they were before the election,” she concluded. “As the Wise Persons Committee declared seven months ago in giving a title to its report, ‘It’s time’.”