People Mentioned
Partner, Disputes, Toronto
Serious trade threats coming from the U.S. make a strong case for revisiting a pan-Canadian model for improving this country’s capital markets regulation, says Larry Ritchie, partner, Disputes, in an interview with Financial Post.
“Recent events demonstrate that there are risks to Canada’s ability to nimbly respond to new and evolving challenges due to fragmentation in both trade and financial regulation,” he says.
A passport system was created 20 years ago, designed to allow companies to follow a harmonized set of legislative provisions across a national system. However, the Ontario Securities Commission, the largest securities regulator in the country, did not sign on. Ontario joining the passport system could “move the needle” if it was also expanded beyond reciprocal acceptance of activities such as prospectus filing and obtaining exemptions, says Larry.
What is really needed is for governments to recognize the trade threat as a moment to realize that capital opportunity and risk transcend provincial borders.
“The failure of the cooperative model was essentially a lack of political will. The move to removing, or reducing, interprovincial trade barriers ought to be accompanied by a similar attempt to reduce regulatory duplication and overlap necessary to make Canada more competitive internationally,” says Larry.
“It need not be a re-emergence of the same approach that was tried and failed, but in some form, the reduction of the number of multiple regulators and overlapping and duplicative regulations has to be pursued.”
Read the full article by Barbara Shecter posted on February 14, 2025
People Mentioned
Partner, Disputes, Toronto
