The Canadian Foundation for the Advancement of Investor Rights (FAIR Canada) has tapped a lawyer who spent almost 20 years with the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) as its next executive director.

Jean-Paul Bureaud will take over from Ermanno Pascutto, FAIR’s founder who returned to the executive director role on an interim basis in April 2019.

Bureaud was most recently working as a financial industry expert at the World Bank, helping countries raise their regulatory standards, a release from FAIR said. Previously, he held a number of roles at the OSC, including senior legal counsel and director of the regulator’s Office of Domestic and International Affairs.

Bureaud takes over as FAIR is engaged on Ontario’s capital markets modernization, self-regulatory organization reform and the banning of deferred sales charges, among other issues.

“With the current economic situation, efforts to modernize securities laws, and focus on regulatory burden reduction, it has never been more important for there to be a clear voice for the average investor,” Bureaud said in a statement.

FAIR also faces funding challenges after it was unable to match a donation from the Jarislowsky Foundation and was forced to return funds.