Industry committee  It's also useful to know that the transfer-of-securities provisions are also in the Bank Act and the Trust and Loan Companies Act and the Insurance Companies Act. So for a uniform framework, it would be best to address all those acts at the same time.

Industry committee  Again, most of the transparency with respect to publicly traded corporations is handled through the continuous disclosure requirements of the securities commissions. They're fairly extensive and they've been revised a few times in recent years. The CBCA does require some disclosu

Industry committee  There is nothing major. I helped compile the list, so it's pretty complete, as far as I know. There are a number of technical amendments that would certainly smooth the act, streamline it, make it more user-friendly, eliminate some drafting errors in the previous act, or somethin

Industry committee  As I said, the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance is one of the leading organizations of institutional investors in the country. From the shareholder point of view they would be very good, as would the Shareholder Association for Research and Education. The business groups

Industry committee  All I can say, and this is anecdotal, is that when Enron broke in the United States, I attended any number of conferences on whether it could happen here. There were academics and business people and securities administrators and a number of different stakeholders, and the consen

Industry committee  The committee is free to examine any areas it thinks might help the Canadian marketplace and corporate Canada. But my understanding is that corporations are still subject to market forces: some will asphyxiate, some will fail, but as a group they're a pretty solid bunch.

Industry committee  If I may add to that, as I said earlier, the statute allowed institutional investors, especially, to speak with themselves and to form organizations to lobby on behalf of or to act on behalf of shareholders with corporations. That was a major step forward in freeing up the power

Industry committee  I just received a phone call a couple of days ago from somebody who asked if it were possible that he could send me more information on this. I said yes, and I also told him that the committee was undertaking hearings and that he may wish to approach the clerk.

Industry committee  We'd have to see the statute and what powers it gives to a national securities regulator, and we would look for complementarities. There is some overlap between corporate law and securities law, and there are some aspects that are on parallel tracks. The corporate law in Canada w

Industry committee  Yes.

Industry committee  One of the things the 2001 amendments did was to make much easier and in fact legalize the ability of shareholders to communicate with one another. Prior to that, it was very difficult for them to do so, and it led to organizations such as the Canadian Coalition for Good Governan

Industry committee  Sarbanes-Oxley, or SOX, didn't affect corporate law in the United States, but it was the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that did. In Canada, the Canadian securities administrators looked at SOX and incorporated many of its most positive features, in terms of the disclosu

Industry committee  Well, securities law and corporate law are complementary. But corporate law, as Cheryl said, is a pretty wide beast. There are 195,000 corporations. Less than 1% of them are publicly traded. The SOX rules apply only to publicly traded corporations. We have a percentage of publi

Industry committee  There's a division of labour within the office.

Industry committee  I'm the corporate law policy guy; the insolvency law policy guy is not here right now.