The Ontario Securities Commission says that it is working on a four-year strategic plan.

“Fundamentally, the OSC will focus on making our capital markets safer, more efficient and easier to access and use for market participants,” it says in its latest Statement of Priorities.

“Our plan calls for stepping up our efforts in the following areas: promoting harmony and less overlap between regulators, undertaking prevention-oriented activities, including proactive public education, taking a risk-based approach to regulation, and being less prescriptive where doing so promotes efficiency without undermining safety.

It will seek greater harmonization and cooperation by developing a proposed Uniform Securities Law, developing legislative proposals to permit delegation of powers and duties among Canadian securities regulators and a comprehensive delegation model, and implement the merger of the OSC and the Financial Services Commission of Ontario.

It also expects to do more to reduce the use of offshore trading to circumvent securities laws, to reduce inter-jurisdictional impediments to information sharing and enforcement support, implement legislative changes, and make changes to practices as a result of the recommendations of the Regulatory Burden Task Force.

On the compliance side, the OSC says that its staff have completed the development of the risk assessment model for market participants. In order to implement the model, compliance staff developed and distributed a questionnaire to gather information from market participants. Data will be collected by May 2002.

It says that three matters have been referred to the OSC’s investigation team as a result of matters reviewed by its intelligence analysts. And that enforcement has seconded two investigators to joint criminal investigations involving organized crime groups in the Ontario capital markets. It is also working on a joint Canadian Securities Administrators oversight program for the Mutual Fund Dealers Association, and it is working toward an MFDA contingency fund.