Effectiveness, Accountability, and Bias: Some Concerns about a Quasi-National Securities Regulator

• Author: Andrew Green
• Pages: 185-194

• 185

chap ter 10

Eectiveness, Accountability, and

Bias: Some Concerns about a

Quasi-National Securities Regulator

Andrew Green

A. Introduction

Governance institutions and instrument choice are at the core of

the problem of risk regulation, including how to address the risks

arising from securities markets. The Supreme Court of Canada

took the federal government’s national securities regulator pro-

posal off the table in its recent Reference decision.1 The federal

government had sought to establish a single national regulator,

but the Supreme Court pointed toward a more cooperative ap-

proach, with some indication of areas that could be under nation-

al regulation such as information collection and the regulation of

systemic risk. In this volume, papers by Cristie Ford and Hard-

eep Gill and by Janis Sarra offer an optimistic view of how such



for addressing risk from the securities market.2 However, while

these authors raise excellent points about how this combination

of federal and provincial regulation could operate effectively, the

quasi-national regulatory system they propose raises concerns

about how well systemic risk will actually be regulated and

       

the cur rent sys tem.

1 Reference Re Securities Act, 2011 SCC 66.

 