IGOPP’s Position paper National securities commission

Last May, Canada’s Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty tabled a bill that aimed to replace the 13 provincial and territorial securities commissions with a national one. The government immediately submitted its proposal to the Supreme Court of Canada, to get an opinion on its constitutionality.

The IGPPO deposited a position paper to draw the court’s attention to the absence of any factual basis for claims regarding the efficiency and effectiveness of centralized securities industry regulation.

There are no existing studies that show that communications within a federal regulator’s various offices would be more efficient than communications between provincial regulators and the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) in the existing passport system.

As an Institute dedicated to the research and distribution of governance related information, the IGPPO believes that the court should respond to the question that was asked of it, by basing itself on modern governance principals related to complex organizations, and by adopting an evidence-based methodology, rather than relying on suppositions or conjectures regarding the merits of centralization.