Scotia Capital Inc.’s Brian Porter is the new chairman of the Investment Dealers Association of Canada, replacing outgoing chairman Kym Anthony of National Bank Financial Inc.

Porter took over the chairmanship from Anthony at the IDA’s annual general meeting, held Monday afternoon in Mont -Tremblant, Que. Ross Sherwood, from Vancouver’s Odlum Brown Ltd., was named vice chairman for the coming year.

In his inaugural address, Porter gave his priorities for his term as chairman, a list headed by improving investor confidence. Porter says that corporate reputation does affect shareholder value. “If it’s something investors and our shareholders are interested in, it’s something we must address,” he said.

“This is a large-scale effort, one that will involve every one of our members,” he said. “We must each focus on business practices at our firms and ensure they are ethical, honest and fair. Proper behaviour, sound corporate governance and ethical business practices applied over the long term will, in time, increase investor confidence in the markets.”

Porter also addressed the national regulator issue, a subject that has been conspicuously absent from much of the talk at the conference. He toed the IDA party line, which favours change to improve efficiency but declines to choose a favourite structural model. “The final choice of systems will be a political decision, and we will work with any chosen model, provided it is practical and is a significant move forward for all stakeholders,” he said.

Along the same lines, Porter expressed the IDA’s willingness to work with the Ontario Securities Commission on its fair dealing model. Earlier in the day, OSC chairman David Brown indicated that the FDM has been refined to focus on four areas of the broker/client relationship that it thinks are most important; these chiefly involve taming conflicts of interest and improving transparency around compensation, conflicts and performance reporting.

Porter said that the IDA welcomes the OSC’s efforts and agrees with its underlying principles, and that it will work to ensure that it meets all market players’ needs and does not become just another layer of regulation.

Finally, Porter stressed that he will continue to work toward the IDA’s formal recognition as a self-regulatory organization in Quebec. IDA president and CEO Joe Oliver echoed this priority in his report to the board. Oliver also thanked the IDA’s representative in Quebec, Carmen Crepin, for her efforts on this issue.

Much of the rest of Oliver’s report was consumed with itemizing various IDA initiatives over the past year, although he did reveal that it has engaged a consulting firm to perform a comparative analysis of the IDA’s regulatory requirements with those of the banking industry’s prudential regulator, OSFI. He noted that the objective of this analysis is to study the feasibility of using “value-at-risk” risk modeling for regulatory margining and reporting purposes.

Apart from Porter and Sherwood, there are several other changes to the IDA board. Anthony becomes past chairman, replacing Terry Salman. Industry directors Tom Caldwell of Caldwell Securities Ltd. and Debra Hewson of Odlum Brown are leaving the board, as are public directors Ruth Goldbloom and Paul Hill. Joining the board are Don Charter, CEO of Dundee Securities Corp., Merrill Lynch Canada Inc.’s Ron Lloyd, and Rob Jennings of Jennings Capital Inc. (Jennings also heads up the IDA’s National Advisory Committee). The new public directors are Donald Black from Regina, Daniel Leclair from Montreal and Halifax-based Dale Godsoe.