moved:
That, in the opinion of the House, securities regulation falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces and that, therefore, the federal government should reject, once and for all, the idea of creating a single securities regulator for all of Canada, thereby respecting the unanimous will of the National Assembly of Quebec.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today and to introduce this motion in the House of Commons in order to make it clear to all the provinces and the federalist political parties that an important position was unanimously expressed by the political parties in the National Assembly of Quebec
The Bloc Québécois has long represented this position in the House of Commons: we disagree with the government's current position, supported by the Liberal Party, that there should be a single Canada-wide securities commission.
I would like to go over the motion again. Every word in this motion has been carefully chosen and represents the clear will of Quebeckers. The motion states:
That, in the opinion of the House, securities regulation falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces and that, therefore, the federal government should reject, once and for all, the idea of creating a single securities regulator for all of Canada, thereby respecting the unanimous will of the National Assembly of Quebec.
Although we did not do so, we could have emphasized in this motion that Quebec has exclusive jurisdiction over securities regulation and that the National Assembly had unanimously voted to condemn this bill. The current system has had extremely positive reviews and is perfectly in keeping with the fact that the provinces have jurisdiction over this area. Quebec and other provinces are doing a very good job of regulating securities.
In introducing this motion, I have the support of all the Bloc Québécois members. We are totally opposed to this idea, which is not new and has been raised time and again. It was first brought up by the former Liberal government, and now it is being resurrected by the Conservative government. However, it runs completely contrary to the interests of Quebec and all Quebeckers.
The OECD and the World Bank approve of the current system, and all of the provinces are part of a passport system. Despite that, the Conservative government, once again with Liberal support, thinks that its idea is a good one.
We believe that only one province would benefit: not Quebec, but Ontario. That is why the government wants to go ahead with its plans. The government is determined to give Quebec a raw deal.
The Constitution states quite clearly that securities are under the jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces. Quebec's National Assembly is unanimously against the creation of a pan-Canadian organization. A common securities regulator would threaten exchange activities in Montreal, activities that have already been curtailed at the Montreal Exchange over the past few years. It would concentrate the financial market in Toronto. Analyses and assessments have been done. That is what the Conservative government is trying to accomplish by proposing a single securities commission.
Once again, despite everything, they want to change a system that is working well. The World Bank and the OECD have assessed it and found that the current system works very well. It is efficient and effective.
The passport issue has gained approval and praise, but the government is going ahead anyway.
I would like to get back to the [National] Assembly's unanimous motion. I said “unanimous motion”, but Quebec's National Assembly actually passed several unanimous motions criticizing the federal government's initiative. The National Assembly passed a unanimous motion to that effect on October 16, 2007. The motion said:
That the National Assembly ask the federal government to abandon its Canada-wide securities commission project.
That was in the fall of 2007, but in the fall of 2008, the government nevertheless used its economic statement to push its agenda and try to allocate money for advisory groups to sanction its proposal to disregard Quebec's wishes yet again. On January 15, 2009, after the Minister of Finance announced the government's intention in the fall 2008 economic statement, Quebec's National Assembly passed yet another unanimous motion reiterating its strong opposition to the proposed pan-Canadian securities commission. The idea is not in Quebec's best interest. That is why the Bloc Québécois will always strongly oppose the idea. We will fight it with all we have got.
This is not the first time that a federal government has tried to interfere in the provinces' jurisdictions, and particularly in Quebec's. Once again, it is more than a symbol; it is a habit that the Liberals and Conservatives both have of interfering in Quebec's jurisdictions. Securities are a perfect example. In the 2008 budget, the Minister of Finance announced the creation of an expert panel on securities regulation to work on a model common securities act, which would create a Canadian advantage in global capital markets. At that time, the Minister of Finance knew very well that this fell under the jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces. Nevertheless, he said in his budget that he wanted to create a Canadian advantage by interfering in a jurisdiction that does not belong to him. He did it despite the fact that the World Bank and the OECD—which I will come back to—gave favourable reviews about the performance of the system that currently exists in Canada and is used in each of the provinces. It allows all the provinces to participate, except Ontario, which has always refused to participate in the passport system, and this would make it possible to improve the current system. So, although there are a few complaints about the current regulation system and some improvements that could be made, we do not necessarily need a national system, when the federal government does not have jurisdiction over this issue. We need to force Ontario to participate in a passport system with the other provinces, which would eventually ensure better quality and better control over the securities system.
However, knowing full well that it can count on the support of federalist parties in the House of Commons, Ontario is very much aware that by not joining the passport system like the other provinces did, it will benefit from the implementation of an eventual single securities commission.
That is why it is still refusing to take part in a passport system, which would clearly make the system work better.
The expert panel that I mentioned earlier and that was established by the minister in his 2008 budget presented its report at the end of 2008. That report contains a series of measures aimed at creating a single securities commission. This is no surprise to us. That budget welcomed the panel recommendations, as did the 2009 budget. Moreover, the 2009 budget allocated $150 million to strike a committee that will be responsible for implementing the recommendations from the previous committee.
The budget implementation bill brought forward by the Conservatives, again with the support of the Liberals who will obviously do anything to save this government, even interfere with Quebec's jurisdiction, allocated considerable sums of money to put in place the necessary legislative framework for the creation of a single commission.
This situation is unacceptable. The minister stubbornly insists on going ahead with a bill that goes against the unanimous will of the National Assembly of Quebec and which is a flagrant violation of Quebec's constitutional jurisdictions. We will continue to defend Quebec against these centralizing tendencies. It will be a very tough battle.
The idea of establishing a single regulatory body for Canada has resurfaced periodically for the past 40 years. We have been opposed to it for 40 years. We are still opposed to it and will continue to be. However, since 2003 this proposal has been gaining ground in the words and actions of successive governments, both Conservative and Liberal. The Liberals, when they were in power in 2003, also set up an expert panel to study the possibility of creating a single regulatory body. Nor was it a surprise in 2005 when the Government of Ontario asked an expert panel chaired by Purdy Crawford to study the benefits of a single regulatory system. That report obviously confirmed Ontario’s arguments in favour of creating a single body, which would be advantageous to Ontario.
Quebec is opposed to the creation of a single regulatory body. Someone wins and someone loses in such a case, and Quebec will fight tooth and nail to defend its interests because that kind of system would put it at a disadvantage in the future. It will defend its interests because the current system works well. It has been favourably reviewed internationally. The people who have analyzed the economic crisis of the past few years have never been able to show that the financial crisis in this country was due to the fact that Canada has a system in which the provinces have the power to regulate securities. Everyone knows very well that this crisis started in the United States and we felt the effects here. However, there is absolutely no cause and effect relationship between the crisis as we are experiencing it in this country and the fact that our regulatory system comes under provincial jurisdiction. Indeed, we have fared better than many countries. That shows once again that the current system works well.
For two years now, we have had a passport system to improve our regulatory system, although Ontario has refused to join in. I repeat that if Ontario joined the scheme, it would work like a charm.
We could talk for a long time about how we reached this situation. I said earlier that Ontario established an expert panel and that the federal budget raised that idea again in 2006. We see that since it took power the Conservative government has slowly been laying the groundwork for a single securities regulatory body, once again without paying any attention to the message coming from Quebec.
Quebec does not want a single regulator because what we have in Quebec right now is working. We want to maintain what we have and we do not agree at all with this system. The Conservative government first began laying the groundwork in 2006. That position was reaffirmed once again in the economic update of November 2006, as well as in the 2007 budget.
In June 2007, following a meeting of the ministers responsible for securities, the current Minister of Finance announced plans to set up an expert panel clearly mandated to study the objectives, outcomes, and performance measures that would best anchor securities regulation and the pursuit of a Canadian advantage in global capital markets.
At the time, if the minister had taken constitutional law into account, he certainly would not have talked about pursuing a Canadian advantage. Instead he would have talked about the pursuit of an advantage for all participants, that is, the provinces. He would have asked the expert panel to find the best way to improve our regulatory system and to determine what aspects we should be focusing on in order to promote a better system for all the provinces and for Quebec. However, he said the opposite and completely ignored the existing constitutional jurisdictions. He asked the group to pursue a Canadian advantage, with the underlying motive of creating a single commission to regulate all powers related to securities.
Of course, he gave the expert panel different objectives, but the Bloc Québécois knew full well at the time that such expert panels have a bias toward a single securities commission, and their conclusions concur, completely ignoring the fact that our system works and that there is a considerable and unanimous opposition to a single securities commission, not only in Quebec, but also in Alberta and British Columbia. But the federal government is completely ignoring that.
That is why the Bloc Québécois is once again moving a motion in this House. It is doing so in order to make a strong argument and to emphasize the fact that, if the Conservatives go ahead with this nonsense, they will be interfering in provincial jurisdictions and disrespecting the unanimous will of all of Quebec's political parties. It also means they are not defending the interests of Quebec and all Quebeckers.
In closing, I invite all my colleagues here in this House to vote in favour of this motion. I am convinced that we will one day be able to bring all parliamentarians in this House to their senses.
