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Ontario – Draft Capital Markets Act
Letter Summary:
While we support the platform legislation approach of the Consultation Draft in order to promote regulatory flexibility to create and amend rules quickly, in the era of burden reduction we would appreciate additional information with respect to the need for an entirely new statute in lieu of substantively equivalent targeted amendments amending the existing Securties Act and consolidating the Commodity Futures Act. Given that a new Act in form of the Consultation Draft was the chosen course of action, publishing of the cost-benefit analysis prepared in connection with this decision would also likely be of interest for stakeholder review. Given the Consultation Draft, and given the length of time one would anticipate the resulting final Act to be force, we believe there may be room for additional forward-thinking policy innovation (particularly given that ‘facilitating innovation’ is one of the stated principles of the Consultation Draft) and additional legislative provisions with regard to topical issues in securities regulation such as sustainability and diversity. We believe consideration should be given to enshrining
Overview of the Council’s Comments:
The CSA we support efforts to modernize securities legislation and rules in Ontario and were pleased to see that a number of recommendations made by the Taskforce have been addressed. While we appreciate the platform approach taken by the Consultation Draft and the myriad proposals embedded in the draft Act, we believe that additional investor-friendly defining principles for the Act, such as an expanded legislative best interest standard to registrants with discretionary authority over client assets, would make the proposed Act worth the immense prospective effort of implementation for capital markets participants, investors, and regulators