Industry committee  The chief benefit for the directors is they can't lose their job for three years. That's really the sum of it. They aren't accountable except for every three years.

Industry committee  There's no doubt that business continuity is important, and again I stress that all of our members are long-term shareholders, so long-term performance is really what they are getting at. It's not that shareholders would necessarily replace each and every member of a board annual

Industry committee  Yes, but if a shareholder were looking to replace more than one member of the board, it may take a considerable amount of time.

Industry committee  There's no doubt that each one of our suggested improvements is important in and of itself, so any one of them would definitely improve the accountability of directors. But we do think that the ability to elect directors yearly is important.

Industry committee  I'll start. We think that securities regulators do a fairly good job in obtaining administrative penalities for insider trading. Where we think the Canadian system is woefully inadequate is in the criminal prosecution of insider trading. As you well know, there's movement to cr

Industry committee  I will take a shot at that. Insider trading is largely prosecuted through the securities commissions. I think the securities commissions would probably be best to speak to the quantum of the problem and the things being done to address it. We did urge consultation with securiti

Industry committee  I think it probably does need a push. Initially, the largest issuers, the banks, were the first to adopt it, and then the larger, more sophisticated issuers were to follow suit. But there are certainly some issuers who have communicated to us that they have no intention of adopti

Industry committee  I'll add to that. I agree with everything Ms. O'Neill said. We have recently published our principles for executive compensation, which is a guideline to help companies make their compensation clearer. One thing that we stress when we meet with boards of directors is that it shou

Industry committee  I think that was my statistic, and it was that 98 of 209 of Canada's largest issuers have adopted our majority voting policy, which lets them have majority voting in spite of the fact that the CBCA doesn't require it.

Industry committee  No. We're dealing with public companies. There would always be more than one shareholder in a public company.

Industry committee  As I said earlier, that's presuming that shareholders would choose to change a director every year. I think that's very unlikely. Most sophisticated investors realize the need for continuity. After all, they are in this to make money and they know that this is important for any b

Industry committee  No, not necessarily, but certainly the largest institutional investors, all of whom would be members of the coalition, would be communicating their concerns about particular companies or directors. They may not all vote the same way, but they would certainly be aware of one anoth

Industry committee  That would presume the directors would change every year. And I think it's very unlikely, absent a concern, that shareholders would vote to change each and every director every year. That seems quite unlikely. The evil it is trying to rectify, which is that of entrenchment, wher

Industry committee  It would be a technical possibility. But I think particularly for Canada, where ownership is so concentrated.... I know that our members typically control between 15% and 45% of the largest Canadian public issuers, and our members are sophisticated institutional investors who hav

Industry committee  Thank you. The CCGG thanks the committee for the opportunity to appear before you and provide you with our perspective on what we think are important changes that should be made to the CBCA. First, by way of introduction, the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance is a coalitio