The Ontario Securities Commission has published a revised Statement of Priorities for the fiscal year to March 31, 2008.

The OSC is required to report its priorities for the coming year to the overseeing minister by June 30. On April 27, it published a draft statement for public comment. The commission reports that 15 responses were received. “The responses were generally supportive of the direction and goals we have set. There continues to be strong support for initiatives that would improve the efficiency of our markets through harmonization of regulatory requirements,” it says.

“Support was also consistent for our enforcement and compliance related goal and initiatives,” the OSC adds. “A number of comments and suggestions also endorsed various retail investor initiatives including point-of-sale disclosure, investor education and efforts to improve investor access to timely and affordable means of redress.”

In response to the comments, the OSC says it has made a number of changes to the draft statement. “We have clarified our intention to examine alternative securities regulatory approaches, to specifically include principles-based regulation,” it reported. It also pledged to collaborate with the Canadian Securities Administrators to improve, “processes for providing timely alerts and other information to investors”; and, that it would work with the CSA, to review technological solutions to, “improve the timeliness of public access to information on a CSA-administered system”.

“Many useful suggestions focused on specific action steps that could be taken to achieve the identified priorities. A number of interesting points were also raised that, while not having been added as specific initiatives for 2007/2008, do warrant further attention,” the OSC adds. “We will be reviewing these ideas to see if they can be incorporated in some way as part of the Investor Forum later this year.”