Feds launch consultation on tax proposals

The creation of a co-operative national securities regulator took another step forward on Thursday as federal officials released a revised version of the proposed new federal securities legislation.

The Department of Finance Canada published a revised consultation draft of the Capital Markets Stability Act for public comment. The proposed legislation focuses on the elements of securities regulation that the Supreme Court of Canada has indicated comes under federal jurisdiction, including systemic risk, criminal enforcement and national data collection.

The revised draft aims to address the comments that were submitted on the initial proposals in 2014. The revisions aim to: focus the powers granted to manage systemic risks; introduce stronger protections for confidential information collected by the new regulator to deal with systemic risk; and strengthen regulatory co-ordination between the new authority and other regulators that don’t participate in the co-operative initiative.

The revised draft also narrows the range of the new authority’s regulation-making powers to focus on systemically important products and benchmarks and systemically risky practices.

So far, British Columbia, Ontario, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and the Yukon have committed to joining the co-operative regulator. Alberta and Quebec have come out against the idea, whereas the other jurisdictions have yet to declare their intentions.

Policy-makers have yet to release a draft of proposed rules under the new federal legislation. Certain components of the proposed provincial rules as well as a mechanism for the new authority to interact with the remaining provincial regulators are still to be released.

Last year, most of the proposed provincial rules were published for comment alongside revised provincial legislation.

Comments can be submitted on the co-operative capital markets regulatory system‘s website by July 6.

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