Bill 4, Securities Amendment Act, 2011

March 17, 2011

Mr. Anderson: Twelve minutes? Okay. I just want to rise and again express support – I forget where I left off last time – for Bill again express support – I forget where I left off last time – for Bill 4, the Securities Amendment Act, 2011. The reason the Wildrose supports this is because it seeks to improve the passport system, which we think and we believe is a good system. It’s a system that has worked very well for our securities regulation. It’s been great to have the ability to have a flexible provincial security regulator, that is flexible to our local needs and local economy, specifically trying to raise capital for energy investment, which is a big one. We think that it’s very important that we maintain control over that jurisdiction. I would say, too, as other members have said, that securities regulation, obviously, has always been a provincial jurisdiction. What I’m worried about is that once the federal government inserts itself into an area of provincial jurisdiction, as it often does, it’s very difficult to get them out of it. So what is right now a provincial jurisdiction all of a sudden could quickly become a shared jurisdiction. Even though the constitution doesn’t say that, that’s essentially what might happen.

Again, we’ve seen this in health care. We’ve seen this in education. We’ve seen this a lot in agriculture. We’ve seen it in a lot of different areas where the federal government feels that they need to come in and, certainly, assist certain areas that are clearly provincial matters instead of what they should be doing, which is transferring tax points to the provinces from the federal government so that they can better raise money for education and health care and all these different things and not have another level of national bureaucracy, even farther removed from the people, to affect issues such as health care, education, the environment, and so forth. There are a lot of them.

We completely support any move by this government to encourage and promote and strengthen the current passport system and to maintain exclusive jurisdiction over securities regulation. There are many reasons for that, and I hope that people understand why it is so important to maintain this jurisdiction. One of the big reasons is that, you know, once you give up something – say we did have a national securities regulator; it probably would be based out of, most likely, Toronto. There might be suboffices across the country, but I would assume that the heart of it would be on Bay Street. Once you cede that territory, what would happen inevitably because of their larger population and larger market share and so forth that they would have in securities in the country is that they would start setting the rules, and we wouldn’t have much of a say in it.

That could quickly evolve if you get somebody in there who doesn’t understand the needs of the various regions and all of a sudden they decide that they’re going to start throwing their weight around and making it more difficult to raise capital. Or perhaps they don’t regulate it enough and just kind of get lazy and have an anything-goes attitude. It’s hard as a province – although    we’re growing and although our importance is certainly improving in regard to our economy within Canada, we’re still not by any stretch the big kids on the block yet. We’re getting there, but we’re still the fourth-largest province, and Quebec and Ontario and B.C. are bigger. So if they start throwing their weight around in a way that we don’t agree with and in a way that we don’t want to go along with, it’s going to be very hard as part of a national securities regulator to have any real say, and that is not acceptable. I talked previously about the system being more responsive to regional interests and flexible enough to accommodate the unique needs of our local markets. The good thing about the passport system, though, is that there are a lot of areas in securities regulation where all the provinces, certainly all the major provinces, agree completely on what and how something should be regulated. So we’ve come together and made this passport system, which provides a single point of access to markets across Canada through a harmonized regulation with the other provinces and their securities regulators.

We feel that this is great. We do not agree with the premise of the federal government – and we’re glad to see this provincial government doesn’t agree with the premise of the federal government – that a national securities regulator is needed to decrease the costs of raising capital, of doing public offerings and so forth. We don’t feel that’s the case at all. We feel that the passport system, obviously, can always continue to be improved and updated and more and more streamlined, but it has been very effective. I think, you know, that one of the big misnomers out there, that I heard the   current federal Finance minister talk about, was how with the recession and the world economy and everything, the tumult that was going around, we need this new national securities regulator to make things better and to help make it easier and simpler to raise capital in the capital markets here in Canada.

Well, if you look at the meltdown that occurred with regard to the economy with these derivatives and such bogus paper assets that were out there, although Canada was definitely affected, it was affected less than most. We were able to frankly weather the recession better than any other G-8 country and, I would say, probably most industrialized nations if not all industrialized nations. You know, it’s the old adage: don’t fix what isn’t broken. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. This is a classic example. Could it be improved? Could we improve our enforcement? Yeah. Could we improve our policing with regard to fraud and so forth? Yeah, absolutely, we could. But that doesn’t mean you rip up the whole system and start from scratch with a huge national regulator down in Ottawa.

In the rankings we see that Canada’s regulatory system is consistently ranked as one of the best systems in the world, meaning that the provinces have done their job well in the field of jurisdiction. Some organizations, think tanks, and publications have ranked Canada very highly. These are very prestigious and well  respected organizations; for example, the OECD, the World Bank Group, Euromoney, and the Milken Institute. These are obviously very influential and well-respected economic organizations and think tanks, and they have clearly said that the way we do raise money in our securities regulation set-up that we have here in Canada is very effective, amongst the most effective in the world. We in the Wildrose concur. There’s no reason to fix what’s not broken. You know, it’s kind of like the royalty framework, hon. Member for Calgary-Glenmore, isn’t it? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. This government did that and cratered the natural gas industry. It’s never been the same since. But they have since backtracked to essentially where they were before. They still raised it a bit, but they came back a little bit, and sure enough the money is flowing back. Let’s not do the same thing to our securities regulator framework that this government did in cratering our natural gas producing industry.

I think, in conclusion, that Canada clearly fared better than most countries in the world during this last financial crisis. There was nothing in our securities regulatory framework that in any way harmed us or inhibited us from getting through this last recession. As we go forward, there are no substantive barriers to raising capital in our Canadian capital markets by leaving the current passport system in place. I hope that all members of this House, regardless  of what party they belong to, the PCs or the NDP or the Wildrose or the Liberals or the Alberta Party – there’s no reason why we should change what is not broken. I hope that the current finance minister and President of the Treasury Board and the Premier and the new Premier, whoever that is in six months when we decide that we want to have a Premier again, you know, that it is not a lame duck – I hope that those individuals will continue to uphold our provincial jurisdiction on this issue and so forth.

Thank you.