Page 18 - Newcom

OCTOBER 2020
PAGE 18
EDITORIAL
Time to act on the CCMR
Now is the time to “fill or kill” the Co-operative Capital Markets Regulatory System (CCMR). This unrealized vision of national regulation has been left to languish for far too long.
Seven years have passed since British Columbia, Ontario and the fed- eral government announced plans to launch a new co-operative regu- lator with any other provinces willing to join. The original launch date was supposed to be July 2015, a missed deadline that had its fifth birth- day this summer.
More depressing, David Brown, former head of the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), first floated the idea of a pan-Canadian regulator almost 20 years ago at the OSC’s annual policy conference in 2001.
From the start, the CCMR effort has been hamstrung by lack of deci- sive political leadership. In some ways, that was by design. Establishing a national regulator with a coalition of willing participants was intended to be a clever way to avoid the constitutional thicket that plagued pre- vious efforts to achieve the same goal in a realm that traditionally has
OTTAWA
been provincial jurisdiction.
The CCMR’s voluntary, soft-sell approach passed muster with the
Supreme Court of Canada. But the CCMR has fallen victim to inertia. While some provinces have nominally joined the effort, the decisive action required to make the CCMR a reality has yet to materialize.
Allowing the CCMR to trundle along with no discernible purpose — except to serve as a sinecure for veteran regulators — has been a harm- less if costly exercise.
Now, however, with a task force in Ontario examining a sweeping overhaul of capital markets regulation, the CCMR isn’t an innocuous sideshow anymore. Spinning out the OSC’s tribunal, revising its mandate and restructuring its governance is inextricably tied to whether or not the CCMR is viable. You don’t renovate a house you’re planning to abandon.
If the political will to carry the CCMR to fruition exists, now is the time to use it. Otherwise, policy-makers should kill the CCMR and clear the way for optimizing the model we have.
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Election or no election, the campaign has begun
Watch for the Sept. 23 throne speech to include promises easily repackaged into an election platform
BY GORD McINTOSH
most members of the political
class seem to think there won’t be an autumn election — and for good reason.
Any political party would have to be crazy to force an election with a pan- demic going on, especially when almost seven out of 10 Canadians think the Trudeau government is doing a good job managing Covid-19, according to an Angus Reid poll.
Even after the hammering the govern- ment took over the WE Charity affair and the sudden departure of former finance minister Bill Morneau, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s own approval ratings are stabilizing.
The governing Liberals want to avoid a repeat of what happened when former Ontario premier David Peterson called a snap election in 1990 amid the Meech Lake crisis. The Liberals lost and didn’t return to power in Ontario for another 13 years.
Still, there is a small chance Canadians could be going to the polls before the year’s out, and there are tangible signs of a changing political landscape.
Let’s begin with the Conservatives under their new leader, Erin O’Toole. Alongside the slogans and red meat thrown to the party base in O’Toole’s leadership platform, there was interest- ing content on climate change.
The platform states climate change policy will be based on the principle of making industry pay, “incenting posi- tive economic change” and a “national pricing” regime.
Even though O’Toole’s policy smacks of a carbon tax, you can be sure the Conservatives will continue to oppose the federal carbon tax — just as the Liberals continued to oppose free trade in the months following the 1988 election before taking ownership of it as policy.
Although O’Toole’s policy book is a work in progress, it is already an improvement over what his predecessor went into the most recent federal election with. Lack of a substantial climate policy in 2019 probably cost the party votes in the seat-rich urban areas of Ontario and Quebec, which the Conservatives must win to retake power.
Under O’Toole, the Tories may finally be thinking about the long term. For example, O’Toole’s platform also included
a tax credit for telecom companies build- ing high-speed infrastructure in rural areas. With anticipated reliance on online learning in a post-pandemic world, the digital divide will be a major issue.
In the meantime, O’Toole needs to stop making stupid mistakes, such as staying silent after a member of his caucus used social media to send a message many con- sider anti-Semitic.
As for the Liberals, Trudeau’s throne speech scheduled for Sept. 23 is especially important.
Normally, voters are suspicious of change. The Trudeau government is bet- ting current times are like the end of the Second World War, when people not only expected change, they demanded it.
The government is signalling that the throne speech will be the beginning of a post-pandemic world order that could include the creation of a green economy, a national daycare program or even uni- versal basic income.
Such a speech will make a dandy manifesto that can be condensed into a campaign platform for the next election — which the Liberals hope won’t hap- pen until next spring at the earliest. And the speech will fit nicely into a slogan the Liberals have been floating over the summer: “Build back better.”
Sept. 23 will mark the beginning of a new era for the two major political parties. Although the throne speech is likely to pass, the Liberals may have a rough time getting their 2021 budget passed.
But whenever the next election is called, the campaign will have already begun. IE
Under O’Toole, the Tories may finally be thinking long term