Madam Speaker, under the British North America Act, as I understand it, we do have trade in commerce or interprovincial trade priorities. The reality is that commercial law is a provincial jurisdiction. That has been set out I think from 1967 onward and is where the evolution of these exchanges has occurred.
The irony of course is that while they are a provincial jurisdiction, it is not uncommon that a corporation that has all its business in the province of British Columbia will list on the Toronto Stock Exchange solely and therefore be governed entirely by the Ontario securities administration. There is a lot of irony that exist.
It is clear that the provinces still covet their position in the area of commercial law to the point that they feel it is their jurisdiction to regulate securities within their borders. That in fact is the big constitutional issue.
I do not believe that the federal government has the jurisdictional authority to simply create a national securities administration. I believe we have to get the provinces on side, but we need some leadership in this. We have to impress upon our provincial legislators that it is time to move on and to go forward with this file.
However, I thank the member for his suggestion. I can see that he supports the idea of creating a more robust capital system in Canada.