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About

Stakeholders & Partners

As a regulator, we work with a diverse group of stakeholders and partners, including:

  • the public, which relies on us to foster capital markets that contribute to the well-being of British Columbians;
  • investors, who seek to invest in fair and efficient securities markets;
  • issuers, or companies that rely on the capital markets to fund growth;
  • securities firms, which advise investors and companies, and facilitate trades;
  • marketplaces, which facilitate trades;
  • other regulators, with which we enforce compliance and develop and implement policy initiatives through the Canadian Securities Administrators; and
  • the provincial government, to which we are accountable.
  • The Canadian Securities Regulation Landscape
  • Other Jurisdictions and Regulatory Bodies

The Canadian Securities Regulation Landscape

We fulfill our mandate to regulate capital markets in cooperation with other members of the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA), an umbrella organization of Canada’s provincial and territorial securities regulators. The CSA coordinates and harmonizes regulation of the Canadian capital markets.

Regulating British Columbia’s capital markets in the context of a national system significantly affects how we conduct our work. It also influences how we consider and implement securities policy in British Columbia.

We work within a “passport” system, which gives a market participant automatic access to the capital markets in other jurisdictions by obtaining a decision only from its principal regulator and meeting the requirements of one set of harmonized laws. All Canadian jurisdictions, except Ontario, participate in the passport system.

To protect the capital markets, we work to identify, assess and, where appropriate, take steps to reduce systemic risk – the potential of a breakdown in the financial system caused by the interconnectedness of its many components. We do this work in cooperation with other securities regulators and financial authorities, through the CSA Systemic Risk Committee and the Systemic Risk Surveillance Committee. These committees also participate in the implementation of measures to reduce vulnerabilities and risk in the financial system and contain crises.

The BCSC cooperates and coordinates with the Joint Forum of Financial Market Regulators (Joint Forum) whose mandate is to coordinate and streamline the regulation of products and services in the Canadian financial markets.

We rely on the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) to regulate dealers and trading activity on marketplaces that have retained the CIRO to be their regulation services provider.

The BC Securities Commission, along with Canada’s other securities regulators, recognized the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO). CIRO consolidates the functions of two former self-regulatory organizations: the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) and the Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada (MFDA).

CIRO regulates:

The CSA will utilize a coordinator model to facilitate the regulatory oversight of CIRO. Initially, the BCSC and the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) are responsible for coordinating the CSA’s regulatory oversight activities.

Other Jurisdictions and Regulatory Bodies

The BCSC regularly cooperates with U.S. and other foreign regulators in enforcement matters. We are also active in organizations that represent North American, pan-American, and international securities regulators respectively:

The BCSC actively cooperates with other Canadian provincial securities regulators and federal financial authorities as a member of the Heads of Regulatory Agencies.

The BCSC is a signatory to the IOSCO Multilateral Memorandum of Understanding and several other information-sharing and supervision memoranda of understanding.