Page 22 - Newcom

JANUARY 2020
PAGE 22
EDITORIAL
Starting the decade off right
Canadian securities regulators closed out the most recent decade on a high note. Here’s hoping they sustain their enthusiasm for investor protection in the years to come.
Getting to that point took most of the post-global financial crisis era, but the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) are finally taking action on regulatory concerns spelled out in a pair of consultation papers issued back in 2012. The issues examined in those papers were raised in part by the financial crisis of 2008-09, which revealed fundamental flaws in the financial services industry’s conduct — although many of the concerns about conflicts of interest, standards of care and industry incentive struc- tures predate the crisis.
Now, the regulators are finally doing something about these long-standing vulnerabilities.
At the end of 2019, the CSA’s client-focused reforms (CFRs), which will explicitly require the industry to prioritize clients’ interests in several areas, formally took effect.
At the same time, the CSA committed again to its plan to ban deferred
QUEBEC CITY
sales charge mutual funds and to eliminate trailer fees for discount brokers. The regulator has pledged to introduce these reforms sometime this year. In both cases, phasing in the new provisions will take a couple of years. As for the CFRs, the self-regulatory organizations still have to develop their own measures to align with the CSA’s new standards for
suitability, conflicts, know your client and know your product. Nevertheless, these initiatives should eventually improve the treat- ment of investors and help divert the industry from some of its baser instincts. In doing so, the investment business may take another step
toward status as a genuine profession.
The CSA’s latest efforts — while admirable — can’t be the end of its
work. There’s much more to be done in a variety of areas, including enhancing advisor proficiency, regulating referral arrangements and improving investor access to redress.
The CSA can justly be proud of its work at the end of the past decade. Hopefully, these efforts mark the beginning — not the end — of its deci- sive action to improve investor protection.
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Quebec’s “comeback kids”
These politicians had left politics, only to return in decidedly different roles and with new ambitions
BY KEVIN DOUGHERTY
françois legault, once a sover-
eigntist in a hurry, now personifies Quebec’s post-referendum view of Canada. Legault, describing himself as a Quebec nationalist with the goal for ever-greater autonomy for his province within Canada, is forthright in tapping into the federal treasury. Without shame, he turns to Ottawa for funding of health care, major infrastructure projects and equalization payments.
Legault is also one of the “comeback kids” of Quebec politics. Foiled in 2001 and again in 2007 in his efforts to assume leadership of the Parti Québécois, Legault left politics in 2009 after six years in Opposition.
“I have given 10 and a half years of my life to politics,” he said then. “So, I have no plans to return.”
Change is the sole constant in politics and two years later Legault re-emerged, creating his new party, the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ).
The CAQ handily won power in 2018, promising it would not call another independence referendum and offer- ing a package of populist policies that as premier have given Legault a 63% satis- faction rating in the most recent Léger Marketing Inc. poll — and 70% among French-speaking voters.
Tom Mulcair’s career as a Quebec
Liberal environment minister was over when he disagreed with then-premier Jean Charest’s plan to privatize Mont-Orford National Park for a condo development.
Mulcair then made a comeback in Ottawa. In 2007, he won a Montreal byelec- tion, becoming the only NDP member of Parliament from Quebec. In the 2011 fed- eral election, Mulcair led 59 Quebec NDP members to Ottawa, emerging as the new NDP leader after the death of erstwhile party leader Jack Layton.
Mulcair’s daily pounding of Conservative then-prime minister Stephen Harper in the House of Commons gave Mulcair a shot at becoming prime minister in 2015. Alas for Mulcair, voters, in their desire for change, instead chose Justin Trudeau’s Liberals.
Now, another Quebec politician is con- templating a comeback.
With the departure of Andrew Scheer as Conservative leader, former Quebec Liberal premier Jean Charest has con- firmed he is considering a run for the fed- eral Conservative leadership.
Charest, now 61, was first elected to Parliament at age 26 in Brian Mulroney’s 1984 landslide victory. When Mulroney stepped down in 1993, Charest made a bid for the Progressive Conservative leader- ship, losing to Kim Campbell.
Campbell went on to spectacular defeat, with only two Tories, one of them Charest, holding their seats.
Charest became Tory leader then, tak- ing 20 seats in the 1997 federal election before the Quebec Liberals wooed him a year later to become their leader. Charest won three Quebec elections — in 2003, again in 2007 with a minority, and in 2008.
Against the backdrop of massive pro- tests across the province by students opposed to a stiff increase in university
tuition fees and a desire for change, Charest lost his own Sherbrooke seat as his Liberals were defeated in 2012.
Charest subsequently retired from pol- itics and now is a partner with Montreal- based law firm McCarthy Tétrault LLP.
Some useful context: in 2003, the Progressive Conservatives merged with the Canadian Alliance and came to power under Harper in 2006. Charest recognizes today’s Conservative party is different, but argues that the leftward shift of Trudeau’s Liberals offers Conservatives a chance to attract voters in the centre.
If the Conservatives want to take on Trudeau, they will have to do it in both official languages. While Harper could hold his own debating in French, Scheer’s weak command of French is blamed by Quebec Tories for the party’s poor per- formance in the province.
So far, none of the other possible con- tenders can match Charest in his com- mand of both French and English.
As Quebec premier, Charest endorsed
the Kyoto Protocol and openly differe
with Harper on how to deal with cli-
mate change. That could be a problem for
Western Tories, who migrated from the
Alliance and oppose Ottawa’s carbon tax.
Charest will have to show creative
pragmatism to hold the party’s Western
base while attracting voters in the centre
in Ontario and Quebec who want actioNenw
versions
Quebec’s permanent anti-corruption police force, has been investigating whether Charest was involved in rewarding con- tractors for their contributions to Quebec Liberals’ coffers, allegations he denies.
Charest needs his name cleared to pur- sue the Conservative leadership. IE
on climate change.
But Charest faces another hurdle.
The Unité permanente anticorruption,
Old
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ersion