The effort to fashion a national securities regulator is getting dangerously close to tipping from sensible reform into futile farce.

From the outset, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has demonstrated both a great determination to create a national regulator and a dispiriting reluctance to strong-arm the provinces into agreement. This delusion, that momentous change can be achieved without ruffling any feathers, is also afflicting the effort’s spadework thus far.

Both the draft legislation released earlier this year and the transition plan published in mid-July suggest a vision for a national regulator that isn’t much different from the current system. The rules won’t change — nor will the personnel charged with enforcing them. Governance will be different, but not clearly better.

As a result, instead of rationalizing the complex and inefficient current regulatory framework, it appears that Flaherty is starting a constitutional fight and creating a huge operational and organizational chore for the existing regulators in what is looking like little more than a rebranding exercise.

The Canadian Securities Transition Office is even reaching into the inglorious intellectual history of the Canadian Securities Administrators in an effort to sidestep the question of where to locate the new national authority’s headquarters — proposing that it will have a “virtual head office.” This dubious notion revives the already discredited theory that the CSA could function as a “virtual national commission.”

That idea didn’t work the first time around, and it’s not clear why it should work now.

There’s no question that there is far too much importance placed on the location of a national regulator’s head office. But it is unquestionably important to have a head office, regardless of its location. Without one, existing duplication and inefficiencies will surely be preserved and provincial fiefdoms maintained — rendering much of this exercise pointless.

Indeed, if a national regulator is going to mean little more than a recasting of the CSA — at the expense of alienating several jurisdictions, saddling the participating provinces with the chore of integrating their operations and somehow creating a common culture out of thin air — it seems unlikely that the cake will prove to be worth the candle.