1. Introduce the Capital Markets Act in Ontario as the legislative vehicle to implement the Taskforce’s recommendations

The implementation of the Taskforce’s final report would require major changes to Ontario’s current capital markets legislation. These new changes would fit better within a modern Act than within the current outdated legislation structure that is split between the Securities Act and the Commodity Futures Act.

Ontario is currently well advanced in drafting an entirely new capital markets legislation under CCMR. The draft proposed Capital Markets Act (CMA), a modern statute replacing the Securities Act and Commodity Futures Act has been substantially developed as part of the ongoing work to develop the CCMR. The draft CMA was published for public comment in 2014 and 2015 and was updated based on comments received.footnote 35

Recommendation:

Implementing the Taskforce’s recommendations would require new, modernized legislation that reflects these significant policy changes and is flexible enough to respond to future capital markets issues in a timely manner. To this end, the Taskforce recommends introducing an Ontario version of the draft CMA.

Using the draft CMA, with an accompanying statute setting out a modernized governance and structure for the OSC, as the legislative vehicle to implement the Taskforce’s recommendations would result in new, modernized legislation in Ontario. The draft CMA uses modern legislative drafting and promotes regulatory flexibility to respond to market developments. It would facilitate the implementation of the Taskforce’s recommendations in this report and would avoid the duplicative work of making significant amendments to the Securities Act and the Commodity Futures Act, which would later need to be reflected in the draft CMA.

Subject to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario enacting the Ontario CMA, the Ministry of Finance should work with the OSC towards implementing the Ontario-version of the CMA by the end of 2021.

Footnotes