The Canadian Securities Administrators announced the launch of the eXtensible Business Reporting Language voluntary filing program on Monday. The voluntary program will help the Canadian marketplace gain practical knowledge and experience preparing and using financial statements in XBRL format.

XBRL is an emerging business reporting language designed to make it easier for investors and analysts to quickly access data and analyze information from a greater number of companies. When using XBRL, “tags” are assigned to pieces of data, and these tags provide information about what the data represents. For the voluntary program, the pieces of data are the content of financial statements, such as revenue or net income.

“We believe this technology will be a great step forward in helping investors analyze financial information, ” said Jean St-Gelais, chairman of the CSA and president and CEO of the Autorité des marchés financiers. “We are confident that the Canadian marketplace will recognize the benefits to investors of filing in XBRL format.”

The CSA will make the XBRL financial statements available to the public through SEDAR.com. The Web site links to the CSA’s XBRL website, which contains more information about XBRL and the voluntary program. Issuers wishing to participate in the voluntary program should contact one of the CSA staff members listed on this Web site: http://www.csa-acvm.ca/html_CSA/xbrl.html.

The CSA, the council of the securities regulators of Canada’s provinces and territories, co-ordinates and harmonizes regulation for the Canadian capital markets.