Joe Oliver, president and CEO of the Investment Dealers Association of Canada, warned the securities industry against complacency when it comes to regulatory reform in a speech to the Economic Club of Toronto yesterday.

Between the provincial reform efforts, the federally appointed Wise Persons’ Committee’s proposed national regulatory model, and the Canadian Securities Administrator’s Uniform Securities Law project, there are numerous reform initiatives on the table. None of them may be entirely satisfactory, and all are far from certain to be implemented.

Oliver said that, without industry involvement, all these reform efforts may come to naught. “I believe there is a risk that the provinces will prove their critics right — that they cannot get their collective act together to make our system as efficient and competitive as it can be,” he said. “The prognosis is not good. Just last Friday, we witnessed yet another example of the provinces’ failure to agree on the important issue of corporate governance guidelines … It is easy to fall victim to inertia. It is easy to postpone change, whenever that option is available.”

Oliver said that the IDA intends to keep pressing more meaningful reform. “The provinces may have concluded that the worst is over, the pressure will now start to abate; and that some progress on USL will be enough to get them off the hook. It shouldn’t.”

“Without political pressure, the likely government response will not adequately address the problem,” he said, putting the onus on the industry to drive toward a solution. “This is a bottom up problem and ultimately the private sector will determine the result, through acts of commission or omission. People like you can help decide this issue — by expressing your views, or failing to.”

“We may be on the verge of a transformational reform in securities regulation… Or we may simply settle for some modicum of improvement and muddle through for a few more decades, wondering why we seem to be losing out on the world stage,” he concluded. “But Canada cannot afford to maintain a balkanized structure in a globalized world. We know what needs to be done. Everything is in place to make it happen. Let’s just do it. It’s long past time.”