NIN 96/48 - Adoption of National Instrument 13-101 - System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval (SEDAR) [NIN - Rescinded]

On December 17, 1996, the British Columbia Securities Commission made a Commission rule providing for the implementation of the System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval (SEDAR) in British Columbia, effective January 1, 1997.

The full text of the SEDAR rule, B.C. Reg. 378/96, which is known as National Instrument 13-101, is being published in a Special Supplement to the Weekly Summary of December 20, 1996. Also published in the Special Supplement are certain consequential amendments to the Securities Rules and the current version of the SEDAR Filer Manual, which is incorporated by reference into the National Instrument.

The Commission adopted the rule following publication on May 10, 1996 of a proposed rule and the subsequent detailed review of written comments received during the formal comment period that expired on September 6, 1996. The Commission has worked with the securities regulators in the other jurisdictions to develop a detailed summary of the written comments received and the response of the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA), which was published previously. The Commission wishes to thank those who provided comments on the proposed national instrument.

The Commission provided advance notice of the implementation of SEDAR by publishing the text of the proposed rule, the proposed consequential amendments and the SEDAR Filer Manual, together with a Summary of Comments Received and Response of the CSA, in a Special Supplement to the Weekly Summary of November 22, 1996.

The Alberta and Ontario Securities Commissions and la Commission des valeurs molilières du Québec have also adopted National Instrument 13-101. In jurisdictions where the implementation process has not been completed by January 1, 1997, it is anticipated that the applicable securities regulatory authorities will accept electronic filings made in compliance with National Instrument 13-101 instead of paper filings.

As previously announced, the CSA, in response to comments received during the formal comment period, has revised the phase-in schedule for electronic filers. The revised phase-in schedule requires continuous disclosure documents (and, in the case of POP System reporting issuers, the Annual Information Form) to be filed electronically by mutual fund reporting issuers and POP System reporting issuers commencing January 1, 1997 and by non-POP System reporting issuers (other than single jurisdiction issuers) commencing on February 1, 1997. All mandated electronic filings must be filed electronically by all non-single jurisdiction filers commencing on March 1, 1997 and by single jurisdiction filers commencing on July 1, 1997.

Also as previously indicated, the CSA has decided to accept Adobe Acrobats portable document format (PDF) as an additional electronic format for documents filed through SEDAR. The CSA considers this to be an important enhancement to SEDAR because it responds to concerns raised about electronic filing of documents that are not commonly prepared in either of the two word processing formats originally proposed. These include documents that are printed commercially or that contain significant graphic material, such as annual reports. The CSA has also worked with CDS Inc. to add Microsoft Windows 95 as a supported operating system.

Questions

Questions may be referred to:

Sandy MacDonald
Director, Corporate Planning and Management Services
British Columbia Securities Commission
(604) 660-4800

Jennifer Yolland
Senior Securities Analyst
British Columbia Securities Commission
(604) 660-3738

Ken Ontko
Manager, Systems Development
British Columbia Securities Commission
(604) 775-0754

DATED at Vancouver, British Columbia, on December 19, 1996.

Douglas M. Hyndman
Chair