News Release

Vancouver – The B.C. Securities Commission released its “credit for assistance” policy today, outlining the benefits for market participants in helping BCSC staff before and during investigations.

“We are encouraging firms and individuals to step forward and help identify compliance-related problems or potential breaches of the Securities Act and work with us to resolve them,” said Steve Wilson, BCSC Executive Director.

“We want market participants to understand that in cases where they have co-operated fully with us during an investigation, we are prepared to be more flexible in dealing with them,” Wilson said. “Beyond this, our goal is to encourage self-policing, self-reporting, and self-correcting by industry.”

Under the policy, BCSC staff may choose to apply one or more favourable approaches to resolving enforcement and compliance-related problems, including:
· narrowing the scope of the allegations
· recommending reduced sanctions
· issuing a warning letter instead of pursuing sanctions
· recommending a settlement agreement, and
· concluding a matter without taking any enforcement action.

BCSC staff says that, as a minimum, greater assistance and co-operation during an investigation or litigation process will lead to lower investigative costs that are eventually assessed to respondents.

“This policy also clarifies our position on what we consider to be assistance and co-operation from someone during an investigation,” said Wilson. “But the bottom line is that we want industry to know that there are benefits to coming forward when they have gone off-side of the securities rules, and to addressing the problems themselves.”

The B.C. Securities Commission is the independent provincial government agency responsible for regulating trading in securities and exchange contracts within the province. Copies of the policy can be viewed in the documents database of the commission’s website www.bcsc.bc.ca or by contacting Andrew Poon, Media Relations, 604-899-6880.