Sure.
I've been advocating a common securities regulator for a long time, with limited success.
The Supreme Court of Canada said two primary things, on my reading of their judgment, among other things. That is, all of us should cooperate, the provinces, territories, and the federal government; that we all have constitutional responsibilities in the area of securities; that the federal government has a systemic responsibility for systemic risk across the whole country, in terms of the securities market; and that the provinces, if I may use imprecise language, have day-to-day regulatory responsibilities.
We have tried greatly and repeatedly to get the majority of the provinces with large populations—and smaller populations for that matter—to join with us in a joint regulator. This is not a federal regulator. This would be a joint Canadian regulator, similar to the Canada Pension Plan, where the provinces and the federal government would delegate power or jurisdictions. This, among other things, would get over any legal jurisdictional arguments, because we would voluntarily delegate.
We've been unable to reach that kind of consensus. Now what do we do? We're faced with the reality that the Supreme Court of Canada has told the federal Parliament that we are responsible systemically for the system. What will happen when the next crisis happens will be that, again, the provinces will come to Ottawa to ask to be bailed out, like they did with the non-bank backed asset-backed commercial paper several years ago.
We feel we have to act; otherwise we will not be following the directions of the court. We will, if we have to, create a federal securities regulator to deal with those areas of jurisdiction the Supreme Court of Canada told the federal Parliament that it has.