Barbara Stymiest, CEO of the TSX Group of Companies, lashed out Thursday at critics alleging that Canada’s capital markets are withering on the vine.

Stymiest was speaking at the Pension Investment Association of Canada conference in Windsor, Ont.

Her remarks came on the heels of recent stories lamenting the loss of liquidity and listings from the Canadian market, and the prominence of inter-listed trading.

Stymiest said that the Toronto Stock Exchange is taking roughly 60% of inter-listed trading volume on a daily basis. “We’re looking at other changes to win us a still-bigger share — for example, we’re looking at U.S. dollar trading on the TSX. We recently published proposals for change to market making on TSX, which will augment liquidity and reduce the cost of trading.”

“Our goal is to milk every last drop of liquidity we can from the potential of Canada’s capital markets — by going to the potential rather than waiting for it to come to us,” she added.

Stymiest noted that market data is a growing source of revenue, and that the new S&P/TSX index and globally-standardized sectors “provide a sound basis for foreign investors to put their money on Canada.”

Stymiest also suggested that the once highly-touted link with the New York Stock Exchange and other global exchanges may be on the rocks. She said that the TSX will build liquidity for Canadian companies regardless how the Global Equity Market project progresses.

“Meanwhile, while we wait for GEM, we are positioned to move more quickly to make the same kind of deal for cross-border trading with Australia that Australia made with Singapore, to the benefit of both markets in added liquidity.”

To make these sorts of cross-border deals though, the TSX needs a single market regulator, and Stymiest returned to that theme “While the real market has moved on, in other words, the regulatory market remains trapped in a 19th century time warp.” She called on business leaders to tackle this issue more aggressively.