IDA conference update: Regulatory task force launched

(June 27, 2005) The latest task force assembled to tackle issues surrounding securities regulation has a $7 million budget and a blue-ribbon panel of securities lawyers, academics and industry professionals.

At the IDA conference in Banff, Alberta on Monday morning, president and CEO Joe Oliver took the opportunity in addressing conference delegates to announce the creation of the IDA’s Task Force to Modernize Securities Legislation in Canada.

The task force has a goal to make recommendations on revising Canadian securities legislation and regulation “to achieve a dynamic, fair, efficient and competitive capital market.”

The team is chaired by Tom Allen of Ogilvy Renault and headed by a who’s who of industry experts, such as Greystone Managed Investments CEO Don Black; professor John Coffee Jr. of the Columbia Law School; ex-CIBC chair of retail markets, Jill Denham; former E*Trade Canada president, Colleen Moorehead; former C.D. Howe Institute president and current CSI chairman, Tom Kierans; former IDA chair and president of BMO Financial group in Quebec, Jacques Ménard; CEO of Taylor Gas Liquids, Robert Pritchard; and Michael Wilson, chair of UBS Canada Securities and a former federal finance minister.

Although the balance of Oliver’s speech to IDA delegates focused on the need to consolidate registration and self regulatory systems, he says the task force will be neutral in the debate between those who favour a national model for securities regulation and those who favour a harmonized provincial approach.

The IDA plans to commit up to $7 million in funding so the task force can hire staff, conduct hearings across the country and meet with academics, regulators, governments, individual and institutional investors, intermediaries and other stakeholders. The budget also covers fees for travel, consultants, externally generated studies, publications and a communications plan.

The task force has no plans to draft legislation, but intends to define principles and clearly outline existing rules to provide direction to policymakers and consider how to provide direction in areas of interpretation, implementation and administration of regulations by staff to ensure continuity of policy objectives.

During the year, the task force intends to review disclosure issues, sophisticated purchaser rules, issues related to hedge fund investing, the role of technology and its place in communication and consent and privacy. It will also tackle balancing the cost and effectiveness of modern governance, access to capital and prospectus filing requirements, enforcement issues and attempts to reduce paperwork for market participants.

The task force will explore the potential of a principles-based approach to regulation and ways to encourage such an approach in the current rules-based, litigious environment.

“You can expect more from the IDA as we continue to provide advice to decision makers, tend to our responsibilities and reach out to stakeholders to fulfill our public interest mandate,” says Oliver.

The task force is due to publish its findings in the fall of 2006.

Filed by Kate McCaffery, Advisor.ca, kate.mccaffery@advisor.rogers.com