Thank you, Mr. Chair, and committee members.
We've given you three sets of documents. One is a statement, two is a short presentation deck that describes the enforcement world today, and the third is an expert panel report. Perhaps I can pick a few bits out of the statement and not read the whole thing. Then I'll be relatively brief.
I guess I'll start by saying that the fact I showed up with three people reflects the fact that we don't actually touch the Criminal Code very much, at least in my division. That may change.
First of all, perhaps I'll say that strengthening the integrity of Canada's capital markets is a key priority, of course, for the government and the Department of Finance. It's critical to both protecting investors and promoting healthy capital markets. It's from that vantage point that we come at this.
It's broadly recognized that capital market integrity requires effective regulation, sound governance, and strong enforcement. In that context it's important to distinguish between actions to improve criminal enforcement and those to improve regulatory enforcement.
You've just heard from the RCMP, and they touched on the criminal side of that.
Regulatory enforcement, on the other hand, is currently conducted by the 13 provincial and territorial securities regulators and supported by a number of self-regulatory organizations, SROs. I'll touch on the regulatory side for a moment to say that the government is taking significant action there. The centrepiece of that initiative is the establishment of the Canadian securities regulator with willing provinces and territories.
The final report of the Expert Panel on Securities Regulation--of which I was the executive director, by the way--released in January 2009, underscored that the Canadian securities regulator will help to improve enforcement by
consolidating enforcement resources and expertise of up to 13 provinces and territories into a single entity; eliminating unnecessary duplication and overlap; supporting greater consistency in investor protection across Canada; and improving cooperation with federal and international criminal enforcement authorities.
There are a couple of other points to make before I close.
The Canadian securities transition office, which was announced in June, is leading and managing the transition to a Canadian securities regulator. Consistent with its government mandate, the transition office is working to ensure that the Canadian securities regulator has legislative powers and appropriate organizational structure to properly enforce compliance with the securities regulatory system.
It is the transition office that's developing the securities act, which is to be completed in spring 2010, as well as the transition plan, with the input of the advisory committee of participating provinces and territories. At this point we have ten participating jurisdictions, which are each representing themselves on that advisory committee. The work of the transition office is expected to culminate in the establishment of the Canadian securities regulator sometime in 2012.
That concludes my opening statement, Mr. Chair.