News Release

Released: 11/20/01 Contact: Andrew Poon
NR 01-59 604-899-6880 or
1-800-373-6393 (Alberta & BC)

Toronto – The British Columbia Securities Commission has launched a two-year project to significantly reduce the burden of regulation that hampers the securities market’s ability to raise capital and provide investment opportunities in the province and across Canada.

“The current regulatory burden on the securities market is too heavy,” BCSC Chair Doug Hyndman told a panel discussion Tuesday at OSC Dialogue, the annual industry forum hosted by the Ontario Securities Commission.

Hyndman said the multitude of complex laws, rules and policies written in legalese make it hard for businesses and investors to understand and comply with securities regulation, which ultimately translates into lost dollars and cents. “Our deregulation team will examine all of our current requirements and assess the need for each one.”

One doesn’t have to look far to see how over-regulation imposes costs on the securities industry and the investors it serves, Hyndman said.

“Over-regulation hinders the industry’s ability to develop new financial products and take them to market in a timely way. Hard-to-understand regulations make it more difficult and more expensive for industry to comply with the law.

“We originally developed many of our regulations to protect investors,” he said. “But those same investors end up bearing the cost of over-regulation.”

The BCSC has directed its project team, led by a full-time commissioner, to have a new Securities Act and set of rules ready to be in force by December 2003. The new documents will be written in plain language to make them clearer and easier for the industry and the investing public to understand.

In addition to meeting the market’s need for streamlined regulation, the BCSC deregulation project responds to a new BC government call for all government agencies to reduce their regulatory requirements by one-third.

The project’s guiding principle is to impose the minimum requirements necessary for investor protection and market integrity while supporting a broader goal of developing uniform requirements among Canada’s provincial securities regulators. The BCSC project team will therefore be working very closely with a committee of senior regulators from across Canada, led by Alberta Securities Commission Chair Stephen Sibold, who are working on development of a national uniform securities act and rules.

The uniform act project, also announced by Sibold at the OSC Dialogue, is targeted at cutting regulatory costs and increasing businesses’ access to capital across Canada.

The uniform act committee and the BC deregulation project team plan to consult extensively with industry and investors across Canada.

“We hope these efforts will help shape Canadian securities regulation for the next decade,” Hyndman said.

The BC Securities Commission is the independent provincial government agency responsible for regulating trading in securities in British Columbia.